Life Beyond Gaming: Phylicia Koh on How Play Became the Operating System for Consumer Apps

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Gaming has grown far beyond entertainment. It is now one of the world’s largest industries—and one of technology’s most influential laboratories for understanding engagement, retention, monetization, community, and consumer behavior.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Phylicia Koh, General Partner at Play Ventures, a global venture capital firm investing in gaming, consumer applications, and the technologies powering both.

Phylicia joined Play Ventures as its first employee after nearly a decade working across marketing, growth, product, and startup operations. Today, she invests in game studios, technology companies, and a growing category Play Ventures calls "playable apps"—consumer applications that incorporate the engagement models perfected by the gaming industry.

The central idea behind the conversation is simple: gaming isn't becoming mainstream—it already is. Instead, everything else is becoming more like gaming.

From Duolingo and Robinhood to Discord, fitness platforms, and short-form microdramas, consumer apps increasingly rely on mechanics pioneered by game companies, including streaks, rewards, progression systems, virtual goods, and community-driven experiences.

Along the way, they discuss:

• Why gaming is shaping modern consumer apps

• The rise of "playable apps" beyond games

• How AI is transforming creative production

• The future of buyer, seller, and consumer agents

• Why women's health is an overlooked investment opportunity

  
  

This wide-ranging conversation explores gaming, venture capital, consumer behavior, advertising, and AI—and argues that if you want to understand where consumer technology is heading, you should pay close attention to what the gaming industry has already built.

Watch the full episode and join the conversation.

🔑 What We Cover💡 Key Takeaways🎯 Why This Episode Matters Read the full transcript below.

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Brett House (00:01.826)

Hey everybody, welcome back to Signal and Noise. I'm Brett House, joined by my favorite person on earth, Rio Longancher, my co-host. and to and I and I say that we spent a lot of time together and we haven't grown tired of each other. And it's been about 30 years. You know, no, you know, there were some times that that we kind of had had breaks from one Yeah, close to 100 podcasts, 30 years and hundreds of hours of socializing.

Rio (00:09.774)

I'm flattered.

Rio (00:21.954)

And close to a hundred podcast episode at this point, so

Brett House (00:28.954)

but today we're joined by Felicia Co, who we'll probably call Phil on this episode. a general partner at Play Ventures, a si a proud Singaporean, right? You're from Singapore? what yeah, yeah, sunny and hot. my my wife Yes, yes, you can't go out in the summer and and walk two blocks without sweating through your clothing. is what I've heard literally.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (00:39.102)

Yes, that's right. I'm from sunny Singapore.

Funny hot tropical. Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (00:50.8)

Exactly.

Brett House (00:52.988)

and and so for those that don't know, Play Ventures, this is we're really excited about this episode. It's one of the world's leading venture capital firms focused on gaming, interactive entertainment, consumer applications, and sort of the infrastructure powering the broader gaming ecosystem, which is an area that we've touched on. We've certainly interviewed a handful of people, but we're super psyched to get really deep into this with Felicia. and or Phil. Phil spent her career working kind of at the intersection of technology startups, venture capital.

Helping identify founders and companies, shaping the kind of the future of digital experience. And before joining play, from my background, you were you were employee number one, right? joining the founders. and I'm gonna I'm gonna try their names, Henrik Surinen and Harry Maninen. That where are they both from? Where are they from? They're finish.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:33.754)

Yes.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:38.031)

Yeah, great. Yes, that's great. Good with the Finnish names. They were both they were yeah, they're origin like they're both Finnish. I say they're originally Finnish, like they s they switched nationally to something. No, they're both Finnish. and were both gaming entrepreneurs. you know, started their own game studios, sold them to Disney and to King respectively.

been angel investing and then investing in gaming and that's how we started play ventures back in 2018. You're right, I joined as the first employee, jumped in both feet, didn't know what we were I was I was in for. I I'd worked at startups before running gross and marketing. So kind of had an idea about VC, but really never thought I would join you know the dark side so to speak. but I figured like look

Brett House (02:08.671)

Yeah.

Brett House (02:15.265)

Yeah.

Brett House (02:25.322)

If you

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (02:28.389)

I I will jump in and I'll learn something and if I hate it, whatever, I'll just leave and I'll figure out something else to do. And and that was the attitude. Yes, I I loved it. I think it's just the fact that like I love I love rooting for the underdogs. And essentially, if you are a crazy enough person to start a found like start a startup as a founder and have this big dream, then you you basically an ar are an underdog. I always say startups are failing until they succeed. You're in a constant state of failure.

Brett House (02:33.684)

Yeah, but you've liked this so far, huh? Yeah, yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (02:58.087)

So, you know, I think that's that's what I really enjoy working with founders who have these big dreams.

Brett House (03:01.078)

Yeah. Yeah, and you've got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable almost continuously, right? Yeah. So it it really does take it it I think it benefits to be a little ADHD when you're founding companies and you know, because you you do have to be uncomfortable with like there's just not a lot of structure and you've got to impose structure on sort of a crazy a crazy world. But you were to Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (03:06.993)

Basically.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (03:20.029)

Wow.

Rio (03:22.082)

Yeah, most companies pivot several times. The successful ones usually make several big pivots. I mean, even like you on a I mean listen that acquired pod a lot, which is great. They had a deep dive in Google. And many people don't realize they they they completely pivoted. They had no idea they're gonna even use search as a as a as as a monetization strategy initially. So so that's not uncommon.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (03:24.806)

Yeah, exactly.

Brett House (03:38.614)

Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. And so you've worked with you said you said marketing and growth, and I saw some companies like Mighty Bear Games, for those that that know the gaming industry, Voice Labs, Omage, Ethnocraft, and you even worked for the Singapore Economic Development Board. That sounds pretty cool. yeah, for a time. So so certainly I

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (03:41.628)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (03:54.823)

For a time, for a time, yes. I marketing Singapore is an economy, so that was an interesting stage.

Brett House (04:02.698)

Yeah, and and what's what I found particularly interesting about play is you guys don't really see gaming as just an entertainment category. Your thesis is is that it's it's really an important ad you know innovation laboratory in technology. And and for those that don't know, I mean, gaming generates about 200 billion a year with the B, with a capital B. Yeah, it's a massive and often under from an advertising perspective, underinvested. That's the general theme that I've heard from talking to a lot of people, right?

Rio (04:20.759)

Massive.

Brett House (04:30.844)

and and a lot of the behaviors that now kind of define digital lives, virtual economies, creator ecosystems, digital identity, all this stuff that we talk about, nad tech and martec, actually kind of has some of its foundings and or appears in in the gaming industry first, right? And I and I see my own kids kind of growing up through the Fortnite years and the Roblox years, talk about time spent. It's insane. I don't think I've ever seen it. Was kind of like me growing and money spent.

Rio (04:57.302)

And money spent, Br Brett. Like I think about my as I I didn't really become aware of it until like because I I used to be gamer and I was young and I kind of get out of it. But I w my daughter re like like she got when she was I think six or seven or maybe a little older, she had downloaded a Roblox, started playing with some her friends, and and at a certain point she started asking us for money so she Robux so she could buy like like now hat hats and glasses and custom outfits. Like it was every cent we'd give her it would be gone within minutes. I was like, Yeah, Abby, what are you what are you doing? This yeah, but like

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (04:59.867)

Yeah, money spent.

Brett House (05:16.992)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett House (05:24.256)

Game upgrades, right?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (05:26.193)

Yes. Cosmetics, yeah.

Rio (05:27.232)

Even it was incredible the amount of money you could you could spend in these things. And, you know, for things that she seemed to be having fun with. So I just surprised like how easy it was to spend money in these things. You realize with all the people playing games, how big it is.

Brett House (05:36.737)

Yeah. Yeah, we would get asked questions by my my youngest son and in him it was like hundreds of dollars, like a like there were there was a month where it was like two hundred and fifty dollars, and we're like on what? And they were all just to enhance his gaming experience and to make him more competitive, like in Fortnite or or other games. And I'm like, my God, like like you know, that's it that was stunned.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (05:57.851)

Yeah. And yeah, and what you're talking about is basically like I think you're right, gaming is two hundred billion. Mobile free to play specifically is a huge part of that industry. And you're wondering like, how can a game that's supposedly free to play how can it make that much money? And that's, you know, and that's monetization and economy design right there, which is an entire discipline on its own and and how the the mobile gaming industry really makes its money, right? And you're

Rio (06:14.381)

Right.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (06:24.561)

you're monetizing and you're giving them, you know, skill progression, power progression, time saving. there's a lot of social gameplay as well, like you talked about in Roblox.

Brett House (06:30.87)

Yeah.

Mo mobile game, yeah. I mean, Roblox has ninety-seven or almost a hundred million daily active users, Fortnite. I mean, when you read these numbers, you're just like six hundred and fifty million Fortnite accounts?

Rio (06:42.052)

the it they dwarf the numbers when a g new game drops. It'll dwarf w what films do. I mean, within a couple of days it'll it'll blow away and even a big blockbuster film.

Brett House (06:47.894)

Yeah. It'll it'll dwarf what most major publishers outside of the walled gardens, like the Googles and the Metas, have you know, and you could probably you could probably compound what they've had from an audience perspective over years, decades, and they still wouldn't amount to what Fortnite and others have done in just a brief period of time. What's it's pretty amazing.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (07:09.447)

Yeah, I mean I think that's the thing like people maybe from outside of gaming don't often appreciate. But then when you put it in context, it's like it's two hundred billion, it's bigger than music and movies and books combined together. And then it's like, wow, that's actually serious business. But you know, and then and then you add in things like real money gaming, which is another eighty seven billion, you add in consumer apps, that's another eighty five billion. So combined is a as a direct to consumer industry that's you know, trending towards half a trillion dollars.

Brett House (07:38.699)

Yeah, so now we know why you got now we know why you got which we talked about beforehand, why you got into to play and and made this jump. What can you tell us a little bit about that trajectory? What kind of what was the carrot that brought you into the org with your two f with the two founders and and you know, was it was it the dollar signs, was it the creative nature of the industry, right? 'Cause it seems like a a huge economic opportunity, maybe both.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (07:38.821)

In twenty twenty it's massive.

Rio (08:00.376)

Maybe both.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (08:03.517)

I mean, like I I spent as I said, first eight years career working in marketing. I thought I would spend the rest of my life doing that. You know, my first job out of college was sitting in my boss's living room and, you know, trying to launch a brand of leather bags and accessories. And we did we did have fun with it and we did get somewhere with it. And then eventually decided, you know what, I'm gonna I want forget bags. Like I wanna go market a country. So I well joined the economic development board of Singapore.

And you know, done stuff since then and like healthcare, right? Which is around a homage furniture, e-commerce, retailer, and things like that. So a bunch of different things. And then basically decided, you know what, I I want to do something different. I'm I'm tired in a way of being blamed for the products. So let me let me go and you know, see what else is out there. I started consulting with a game studio, Mighty Bear Games.

and kind of got to know a little bit more about how, you know, games approaches user acquisition, performance marketing, right? and I was just always really impressed by how disciplined and how much like I think people don't appreciate, like, yes, games is entertainment, it's fun and everything, but it's a serious business. And to do that scale, you need to understand performance marketing and discipline in a way that I felt like they were just ahead of other sectors and industries, right? and

Brett House (09:26.912)

Yeah, even even though it's been around for a while, it's just yeah, like App Lovin' is proof of that. Talk about mastering the the art and science of performance marketing, of driving what whatever you're driving, if it's app downloads or game downloads, it that that ability to drive conversion events of some sort just so effectively. They've they've grown like a rocket ship.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (09:32.348)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (09:45.189)

Yeah, and they were what they were tracking, how they were segmenting users, you know, and and this was pre app tracking transparency, thanks Apple. and and so like, you know, they were able to go user level deterministic, kind of like exactly what is happening here, who's this user, what campaign, what network. Did they complete the tutorial? Have they monetized? What did they buy? You know, and so it was really like super precise and scientific and talk about knowing about

Brett House (09:54.688)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (10:15.013)

your player, right? and and so I was just always really impressed by that. I ended up after consulting with with Mighty Big Rams and a leading product for a voice tech startup. And that was also super fun because I saw how it worked on the product development side. And I was just like, product and marketing got to stop arguing so much because they're really all the same team. They really need to stop arguing so much. But that was great fun and reconnected sometime in that

Rio (10:35.137)

Amen. Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (10:43.239)

time frame with Henrik, who I known for a few years. And at that time Henrik and Hari were setting up the fund. and and they were looking for an analyst essentially to join them. And I was just like, okay, sure. Like it's this is interesting. I I think gaming has a lot to to learn from and to teach me. And I've never really thought about doing VC, but like, what the hell? Hey, okay, I'll try.

I joined it and I think it was a great thing to just I was on this year of like, I'm just gonna say yes to whatever comes my way. I'm just gonna say yes. I'm not gonna overthink it 'cause that's what I do. I overthink it. and then you you find yourself, you know, reasons to not do something. That's always the case. You overthink something and then you just

Brett House (11:17.664)

Yeah.

Brett House (11:26.102)

Yeah. Or yeah, and you realize sometimes the the right choice is often the original like impulse that you had, that gut instinct that you had. You're like I I I had the right answer the first time and then I rethought it over and over again until I Yeah. Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (11:36.473)

Yeah. And then you doubt yourself and then you yeah, you talk yourself out of something. Yeah. And so so that was kind of the the impulse, I suppose, to just jump in. And you know, I figure I didn't I think I didn't realize at that time, number one, just how rare it is to be able to just get an entry level job into VC. Like and then I would meet people later in my career and they're like, How did you get into VC? I'm like, I just I have nothing like that you can repeat, I think.

except to just like just give it a go and try and like, you know, talk to people and and and do all those things. So that was basically how I I accidentally fell into it.

Rio (12:14.114)

Well, Felicia, it it seems like a fun job. I mean, I know VCs are very often criticized, but very important part of the digital ecosystem, right? I mean, these start people don't realize that startups just I mean, you they can rely on angel funds only to a certain extent, right? But you really you really need V C and you know, it's a tough job w where you yeah, you get a lot of misses, but when you when but when you g you get a hit it's you know, it can you get those home runs or grand slams. So

So welcome to the show. It's this this is this is going to be interesting conversation, as Brett mentioned earlier. Like we've done some content related to gaming, but certainly not enough when you look at really the the size and scope of the industry and that many people, frankly, aren't aren't completely aware of or don't fully appreciate. And I think another theme we wanted to dig into was really like the concept of gaming being a many places like a leading indicator of where tech, especially consumer tech, is heading. Many of the things that we take for granted,

We're actually pioneered in gaming and saw success there, then spread to other places. And so many of these behaviors that we now associate with like a modern digital experience, whether it's virtual goods, creator economies, subscription, digital identity, and even the concept of social communities, many of them showed up or were really like perfected in gaming first, I would argue. So the story really isn't more like about gaming becoming mainstream. I think it already is mainstream, right? I think the story is that everything else is becoming more like gaming.

Which I think is a really interesting trend. And I is I think gaming it's currently treated more as a niche category by people outside the industry. I think as this changes, right? And you know, based on the revenue gaming generates, I think it there's no reason for it not to change. It's billions of consumers globally, hundreds of billions of dollars. We heard the numbers that you quoted earlier, it's part of a big business. So but I guess the first question like, why do you think people fundamentally under misunderstand or don't appreciate gaming as a business? Why you think that is?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (14:07.707)

Yeah, I think it's this unique thing where it it emerged kind of almost like a cottage industry in a way, if you think about gaming in its sort of more or less mod modern form. You started with like arcade games in the seventies and I think Pong was maybe the first big commercial commercially viable, kind of successful game. and so I think when people think and it depends on which generation I think of people that you ask, perhaps it's like it's an older generation to them, a gamer.

Brett House (14:33.25)

Well you w watch watch Rio watch Rio and I age ourselves. But yes.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (14:40.121)

No, but like like even like they're like, a gamer is like a teenage boy and in in their parents' home and on his PC and his console. and the average gamer today is in their thirties, which means they're like they're parents, they're head of households themselves now. They have kids, you know, they're in their thirties. but for some reason, like pr you know, perception and image wise, that is just entrenched in our brain that's who a gamer is.

Even though we've kind of moved on. And like I said, most people just don't realize it's fun, it's delivering fun, it's entertainment, but it is a serious business. And to be able to keep delivering, you know, these kind of titles and and products, you have to run a commercially viable business. You can't just lose money. This is not a yeah.

Brett House (15:07.435)

Yeah, yeah.

Brett House (15:24.428)

Yeah. And and w yeah. And would you argue that that yeah, just so so back to that point of of depending on your generation, so I can't probably come from the Atari and then Nintendo generation of gaming. Commodore sixty four, right? I you if yeah, it's a pretty simple games in the

Rio (15:36.77)

Commodore sixty four.

Rio (15:41.282)

We used to make our own games. They would weren't I don't think they're very sophisticated. We used to make them back then. Yeah, that was fun.

Brett House (15:44.321)

Yeah. and I and it was I was certainly the same age as my kids are. They're both teenagers, nineteen and seventeen now. but they they were they actually have kind of graduated out of sort of hardcore gaming. They're not sort of gamer types, but they certainly had a period of like, I don't know, thirteen to sixteen, thirteen, whatever it was, kind of before they discovered social life and I've not not to not to typecast. I think I'm I'm tired. Let me ask you the

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (15:58.461)

Yes.

Rio (16:10.562)

Well, but but no, but I know I know a lot, Brett, I know a lot of professionals outraged who who still game on the side. Though they spend a lot of time gaming every week. I mean s certainly not. I mean, people maybe game more, but I it's such a big industry. I have some numbers here too before you jump in, Felicia. Gaming industry, hundred and eighty four billion with the B annually. Movie industry, thirty four billion. Music, twenty nine billion. So gaming is much bigger than the the movie industry combined, it's significantly bigger than both of them buy combined. So it's a massive industry.

Brett House (16:15.169)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brett House (16:34.262)

Both of those combined.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (16:39.109)

Yeah. Yeah, and and it's also 'cause yes. It is, it is.

Brett House (16:40.182)

So Phil, d my question was d demographics, demographics, is it a much broader demographic coverage than what we're than what I was sort of sort of talking about?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (16:49.305)

Yeah, to your point, you said your kids, you know, maybe they were more PC console, spending hours at a time kind of gamers when they were younger. But the truth is like even if you are just on your phone, and for most people these days, like mobile will be their primary gaming device. Because look, unless you're a student or a child, you just don't really have time to sit there for four hours and play games. But you would play five, 10-minute sessions on a go. And that's also the way that gaming has evolved, right? So you have

Brett House (17:12.108)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (17:18.567)

kind of short gameplay that you can play on your phones, you it's it's casual puzzle games or strategy games, or all s sorts of genres on the mobile that you can gain access to. And all of those I would say are gamers. Like even if they're not sitting there in front of console and playing Call of Duty.

Brett House (17:32.833)

Yeah. Yeah, even even though they're not like the the the quintessential sort of I've got the special seat with like the the the neck brace thing and my my my audio visual connection with my Yeah. Yeah, the the the sort of high h yeah, it's it it's so it so and and do you see a natural graduation from sort of those early years where they might might have more free time to this sort of

Rio (17:44.63)

It's with the special gaming computer, right? It's funny.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (17:47.601)

Yeah.

Brett House (17:56.897)

You would think that that's kind of an upsell opportunity for a lot of these game developers to say, We're gonna get them we've got part them part of our ecosystem. Now let's graduate them to other types of games as they grow and age over time. I mean, is that something that gamers, gaming companies think about?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (18:10.909)

Absolutely. I mean, I mean like and that is also influenced by kind of platforms, right? The shift. So so for example, there are games like for example League of Legends, right? It's a it's a multiplayer online battle arena. It's one of those games where, you know, when you're a student, you have tons of time to dedicate to wins in front of like yeah. But as you well become employed and perhaps have other bosses and then you have kids and everything, like you don't have time to do that.

Brett House (18:26.794)

Yeah.

Brett House (18:33.057)

Ha ha.

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (18:36.289)

what what's interesting is then like then you had the emergence a few years ago of the mobile equivalent of it, which is mobile legends, bang bang. It was just basically reformatted, reworked for to work for a mobile device as your as your controller and interface, right? It is a shorter form game experience. So they've had to figure out how do you take that experience, how do you redesign it for to work for a mobile session. You don't you're not gonna sit there for like

Brett House (18:51.434)

And is that a shorter form game experience?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (19:03.205)

maybe an hour to fin or forty-five minutes to to finish one session. You probably do the maximum like what, ten, fifteen minutes if you're really, really good at it. You don't, you know, you don't have to to to rage quit or or die off early. Like yeah. So so I think the the kind of the platforms, the genres, you start to see it cross pollinate from one platform to maybe mobile to something else. you know, somebody on Roblox, for example, they might also, you know, graduate to

playing on a different platform or maybe Roblox itself, right? They I think they're also available on iPad. I you know, my nephews play it all the time. Like again, it's cross platform, it's changing, it's maturing.

Brett House (19:42.678)

Yeah, and and one one question I had was did you guys see have you just generally seen being an analyst and having done analysis of sort of the whole industry, did you see a huge surge in in in participation and time spent during COVID?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (19:56.049)

Yeah, I think like everybody, time spent, I think downloads, all of that during COVID when we had nowhere to go definitely did increase. And I think there's this narrative, especially around gaming, where it's like, yes, but cos post COVID, like everything's just gone to shit. but if you look at the data, it's not true. Like the amount of revenue that gaming still generates today compared to pre COVID is higher.

Brett House (20:05.493)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (20:22.577)

Right, there was a correction, and I think part of that correction was due to also, yeah.

Brett House (20:22.689)

Yeah.

Rio (20:24.45)

Yeah. It's finally so it was like a it was like a it was like a temporary, like it went it w it sh in every industry it rocketed straight up, right? But then it and it felt but it fell back, but didn't fall back to where it was before. It's it it it fell back as though it had continu as if it continued to go up in a straight line. So people don't realize that. Like, you know, it the COVID might have been artificial inflation, but it like the numbers are still bigger than they were pre-COVID by a

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (20:31.909)

Yeah, exactly.

Brett House (20:32.588)

Yeah.

To to the previous numbers.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (20:36.41)

Exactly.

Brett House (20:46.442)

Yeah, it's it's kind of it's kind of like the hi hybrid working, right? Like it went from pure hybrid working, but it never went back to back to the office a hundred percent of the time. Yeah, so you you end up with this kind of hybrid reality, right? That that's pretty interesting. And I I found that the kids like you know, mi again going back to that and I'll I'll get out of my own experience in a little bit, but the kids used it as a social outlet. Like this was a a different like I you know, and I I'd experienced

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (20:46.983)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (20:53.597)

Cure and yeah, exactly.

Brett House (21:11.828)

multiplayer games, but Rio, you and I grew up in a world where you had to be at somebody's house, there had to be a sleepover, or you were playing by yourself. Maybe there was some sort of like MS DOS text communication, some very simple. But yeah, this was just an opportunity for them. And that's what I thought differently about. It changed the paradigm in my mind of how it came because they would go and join together and, you know, it was like bands of brothers running around these worlds fighting people.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (21:19.725)

But yes, coordinated online.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (21:33.873)

Mm-hmm.

Brett House (21:38.806)

You know, I it was a social exercise and they were connecting with kids that they may not have had otherwise spent a ton of time with or otherwise. So I th I've you know, you can see the change in behavior and the change in in just the capability that these games have to bring a bunch of people together simultaneously, with the chat functionality.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (21:54.833)

Yeah, and and I think that whole that whole social community thing, or co op play or competitive play, that's a huge part of how games, some of the best games end up retaining, you know, users for for a long, long time. Because when you play with friends, when you play with a group, you know, you're more likely to stick around, right? And I think it's it's kind of maybe it's accountability, but it's also that socializing relationship benefit that you have.

Brett House (22:22.816)

Yeah, speaking of socializing sorry.

Rio (22:23.544)

Yeah, so fully so yeah, so I'd a qu I yeah, I had a question about about looking at the some of the features from from gaming. So there's been definitely a trend of many consumer applications. I think one one good example would be Robinhood, for example, of taking some of these like gamified or gamification and applying it to consumer-facing apps. In fact, there's been a criticism of Robinhood. it makes it too easy and too fun, and people don't really understand what they're doing. I mean, that's another story, right? But but I think generally the trend that certainly I'm seeing is like these

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (22:40.637)

Mm-hmm.

Rio (22:52.546)

techniques of games pioneered and perfect end up migrating into different consumer apps. So why number one, why is this happening? But number two, are we really entering a world where consumer apps resemble games more? What do you think?

Brett House (22:59.122)

Yeah.

Brett House (23:03.425)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (23:05.265)

Yeah, I mean, I think one, it's that expectation we've have you know, entire age of people, generation of people now who've become adults and our expectation of fun interaction, engaging interaction on a digital experience is games. And so it's like why wouldn't why can't you have that same fun, you know, apply to something else? Like, I don't like going to the gym and I

working out. So if you can help me with that, that's great for me. If you know language learning, Duolingo was a great example of how to do that and to great success. and so I think w the way we look at it is play becomes the operating system of how we want our most of our digital experiences to be, and to engage us. And we could use, you know, games, I think there was a narrative for a long time. my God, video games are so violent. He teaches us all these horrible things.

But I also think, you know, games has a lot to give in terms of how can you use it to help people build healthy habits. And you know, maybe Robinhood is or isn't the best example in a way. Like I I would say maybe you shouldn't be trading if you don't quite understand what you're doing. but you know, the the the the flip side of that is like i i if they're investing and they're creating wealth, that is a good behavior. I think there's always figuring out a balance of how to do that.

Brett House (24:12.054)

Yeah, yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (24:24.217)

well and and make sure that people actually understand what they're doing. But in terms of helping them to build a habit, it certainly has done its job.

Brett House (24:31.104)

Yeah, well and isn't there a is Slack was another example that started in the gaming community, right, Rio? I think you referenced it, right? So so think of that as just it's a it's a B to C, but it's largely a B to B service that everybody just about everybody in the business world has used at one point or another. Love it or hate it. But

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (24:34.811)

Yeah. Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (24:44.733)

I mean Slack Slack Discord, they were all gaming companies that kind of built tooling and then realized, this is g

Brett House (24:50.006)

Yeah. That made a pivot. This has broader back to your your thesis, Rio, that this has broader applications to just consumer engagement, digital interaction, all that stuff.

Rio (25:01.186)

Yeah, maybe some of it is like the gamers are spending so much time and it and it and it's a massive industry, right? So it's a massive industry, a lot of money is going into it, a lot of money at stake. People are spending tons of time. So these companies have times, ha have opportunities to rule out new things, user test them across tens of millions of people, get feedback, and then I think it's no surprise that you know these things work. Like the whole concept of stock or Discord, you know, giving people these communities where they can interact with each other. It was it had a great application.

You know, for for B to B and for for general SAS, right? So which is interesting. So so Felicia, looking at Play Ventures, you talk your company talks a lot about playable apps. I'd love if you could maybe define that term, explain what it means.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (25:44.199)

I think for us when we think about playable apps, we look at the opportunity to take a lot of the know-how from the business of making games and publishing games and scaling them into new spaces. And most people think, you're talking about gamification. And that's just like one small aspect of it, right? How do you incorporate game design, game mechanics into your product itself to make it more engaging?

To make the day one to day three retention work to then make the day three onwards retention even better. But you know, I think that just is an underselling of what free-to-play gaming has done so well. There's so much on the user acquisition side that they do really well, like we said, and how it connects to the product experience, how it connects to monetization, for example. and and so when we look at playable apps, we're really looking at that whole thing. Is there an opportunity here to take learnings from user acquisition?

acquisition from how mobile free to play games do it to apply into new spaces. is there an opportunity here for us to think about, hey, when you think about a freemium product, free to play, is the only way to monetize through subscriptions, or is there opportunity to do something

Brett House (26:55.456)

Yeah, well, and that's that's a good point. So that's sort of to riff on that, the subscription play. You know, I think of of verticalized content, which definitely is taking some of those that gamification of short form content to to a new level. So instead of charging, you know, these are these are take a long form episode, let's say it's an hour hour that you would ordinarily either pay three ninety nine, five ninety nine for or you'd have a subscription to kind of a Netflix or a premium service. Now you can just watch fifty episodes.

And all of them have incentives, you know, to to keep going, cliffhangers, short form content, and and it's it's a different engagement experience. It's a bit more of the TikTok, Instagram sort of view of the world. and it and it increases the value that the that the content actually delivers, the monetization value, right? So instead of paying $399, you might be paying $20.99 for that hour episode. do you think that that sort of vertical approach to to content?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (27:29.106)

Yes.

Brett House (27:54.259)

production and and distribution. Do you think that that came from the gaming world? Is that a

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (27:59.603)

yeah, it a hundred percent came from the gaming world. I think what we see in gaming to that point about users expecting to be entertained and delighted in that same way across different verticals. Like microdramas is exactly one of that. It's become zero to ten billion in about four years. It's increasing, incredible growth. It is ten billion. That might be, you know, and and China was really where it originated from, right? It grew like

Brett House (28:13.74)

Yeah.

it is is it ten billion? Microdrums are ten billion at this point.

Rio (28:17.102)

That's wild.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (28:25.883)

I think zero to three billion in about two or three years, just in China alone. I think microdramas in China are bigger than their movie industry, which is also really interesting. but it borrows, you're right, it borrows a lot from mobile free-to-play. It's like that quick dopamine hit. You go in there, it's a 20, 30-second episode. you get the cliffhangers, it monetizes your time because you want to know what's next and you're impatient.

Brett House (28:35.118)

that's interesting.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (28:51.435)

and so you pay to unlock episodes. They also take in a lot of how they monetize through ads from gaming. So there's rewarded ads. They do a lot of kind of the daily rewards, the login bonuses, and all of that draw from gaming. So they've taken the monetization and I would say they've taken a user acquisition kind of experience from gaming and incorporate it really well. I think where most of them struggle with is like two things.

Brett House (29:04.801)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (29:18.721)

And it's on I think the product experience side. a lot of why you retain is just, I wanna watch more, I wanna watch more, which makes sense. Obviously, you're watching micro dramas, you want more. But number one, like it sounds like a really familiar thing to somebody in gaming because you're like, This is a content treadmill, then I'm gonna have to keep producing more and more content. And the truth is in gaming or I guess in entertainment, you can never produce enough content to keep up with somebody binging it.

Brett House (29:38.657)

Yeah.

Rio (29:46.754)

Sounds like the podcast business. Sounds like the podcast business Felicia

Brett House (29:47.875)

Yeah, it sounds like the podcast business. We're we're trying to figure out like we're like we're like working, you know, sixteen hour days to as a s not not only on this, but as a side job because it is the content production and versioning process, as automated as you try to make it, is still large, super time consuming. And so but but to your point, the treadmill approach of of like more and more content, you don't think that scales effectively enough.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (30:03.634)

Mm-hmm.

Rio (30:13.518)

But that was sounds like that was pioneered in gaming, which is I didn't think of that and make that connection, but that's that is really that's a great point.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (30:20.219)

Yeah. So, you know, in gaming you would kind of call it live operations. You have like different events, like, hey, now it's the World Cup, right? They'll probably have like a World Cup theme event or or something like that. but that was also because you know, you make the core loop, you can ed in all these systems around like let's make you progress your skills or your levels or whatever. We set in social quests, but it still needs more and more content. We need to build systems to make it more

Brett House (30:29.622)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (30:47.057)

well sustainable for the developer. So you would have live operations teams, you know, running live ops. There are teams in China, for example, and I'm talking about pre-AI numbers really. So they would have like teams of two hundred people working on live operations for single game. And they'd work in like teams of fifth like a hundred. So you'd have a hundred squad doing, you know, the live ops for two weeks and then you kind of schedule them that way.

Brett House (31:10.506)

And live ops are are like you said, like either they're engagement events that occur either thematically or seasonality or around some big event within the game. Like Fortnite did a lot of this, right? W within and and it's and it's happening very quickly and it's changing kind of the normal order of operations within the game or within a micro drama, right?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (31:18.395)

Yeah. Yes. Within the game. Within the game, yes.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (31:30.395)

Yeah. It's about like more more new things to do, right? A new new quests, new missions. There's a new season. So maybe there's like unlock all the jerseys for the World Cup, every country, you know, you gotta collect them all. you know, stuff like that, right? So it works on the core loops, the meta systems that you've already built, but you don't wanna keep building more complicated systems. You wanna be able to push out content in a way on top of these systems and it's working. You're just feeding it more.

Brett House (31:35.265)

Yeah.

Brett House (31:46.719)

Yeah.

Brett House (31:57.749)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where where it's got some sort of it's some sort of application driven sort of it could be agentic at this point, but but where there's a pattern that can be retrofit in a few different ways for different types of engagement events. so you're not rebuilding that core thing, that core logic in the system over and over again, right? Is that the way to

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (32:15.801)

Yeah, basically. And so you would you would have you would, you know, your Live Ops team also would be able to go in and analyze the data and say, like, this was effective. It was effective for engagement. You know, we got players coming back and and and reactivating. This events were good for monetization. So we saw a lot more, you know, conversion, higher conversion, more spending because of these events. And you wouldn't like you would kind of mix and match, right? You're trying to balance it basically.

based on your objective because you don't want it always to be like a heavy push towards monetization. You might cause players to kind of turn. but you know, it's a whole, it's again, it's like a whole discipline on its own. that pre-AI, that was, you know, it was very hard to compete with these teams in China because so many companies, they had huge manpowers, right? So it was very difficult. But like, you know, AI is now something where, you know,

Brett House (32:59.714)

'Cause they the manpower that they would throw at yeah.

Rio (33:01.688)

They can crank out stuff, yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (33:09.021)

Can you bring in because they they can run the numbers faster than you can, you know?

Brett House (33:11.776)

Yeah, a team of ten can do the same thing that a team of maybe a hundred or two hundred could do previously. And so it g it democratizes that that ability to develop and and implement outside of just manpower driven systems, right? Which would be China would have an advantage natural.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (33:17.691)

Exactly.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (33:26.225)

Yeah, basically. Yeah. Yeah.

Rio (33:27.896)

So so so Felicia, pivoting, I guess, to like ad tech and AI a little bit. And this is the part I was really excited about of the discussion that we wanted to dig into, because this is probably we do talk a lot about advertising and and and ad tech. yeah, proud proud proudly. So so so Felicia, your your team, like what I take from your your website materials you put out, seems to be investing a lot in ad tech startups with a seems like a really focusing on the future or thesis for maybe like

Brett House (33:33.12)

Yeah.

Brett House (33:36.874)

R Rio's kind of an ad tech geek. I mean that's you can tell.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (33:39.686)

really? I couldn't tell like just from the just from the background.

Rio (33:58.218)

the feature of advertising, right? I'd like to know like what like what you're thinking here. you know, it's I don't I don't think it's like a I mean it's related to gaming certainly, but it's a little, I wouldn't say these these are all necessarily like bullseye. These are just gaming, just just a gaming play. Love your thoughts on that. Why this I don't know if it's a pivot, but why this strategy? What can you tell us about it?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (33:59.975)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (34:19.589)

Yeah, I don't think it's a pivot. like, you know, we've talked a lot about user acquisition. I mean, advertising, performance marketing, that's a huge part of the gaming business. I mean, mobile games, you know, spend and scale that. That's how they become billion dollar franchises, right? That's how Monopoly Go, which Scopely released, I think it hit billion dollars in revenue in like record time. I don't remember how quick it was. You could look it up, but it was very, very quick. And that was like by understanding.

performance marketing and user acquisition. So that's always been a big part, I think, of the gaming business. And so for us as a fund as well, we've always been interested in investing in the tech that powers the business of games and apps. Advertising is is a big part of that. and and, you know, I think mastering advertising is something that we also see our companies, you know, the ones who can, especially post AT ATT, are the ones who understand, you know,

tracking your cohort performance on a monthly, daily basis. Like what is the return on ad spend? We oftentimes speak to people and they're like still telling us about like, this is my CAC LTV. And we're like, we don't care about that. I mean we do, but we also don't. Like tell me about your ROAS.

Brett House (35:19.852)

Yeah.

Brett House (35:26.496)

Yeah, you Yeah, you're all you're all looking for you're yeah, yeah, exactly well, and your incremental reach, your incremental reach of audiences that you know are gonna convert at X percent across this ecosystem because you can always more effectively win more customers. And there's this acquisition bill just as you gain more data, it gets more accurate, your your conversion rates go up. Right. App Love It built a business on this, and Rio Rio's certainly written about it. We've we've talked a lot about on the

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (35:33.425)

Yes.

Brett House (35:53.186)

You know, and a lot of they they call it s you know, the a lot of it was the the argument against

Rio (35:55.896)

Well yeah, you think about well that well well, Brett, that's why they claim they actually owned all those gaming studios and published w were actually a game publisher for all those years, but to actually gain those insights and then power Axon, which which is I don't know if that's true or not, whether it's just a pivot or that was a deliberate strategy, but it is quite fascinating.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (36:06.151)

Mm-hmm. huh.

Brett House (36:07.862)

He Yeah. Yeah. And there was there was a bit of a s like the kind of circular economics where it's like, hey, we're we're we're promoting our games within our game ecosystem to pe people that are likely to to download more games, right? And so you start to create this sort of feedback loop as well as sort of it sort of compounds itself. My my big question is like and and that that could be the criticism is does that translate I think it translates to performance marketing, but how like Phil, how would you think of

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (36:21.946)

Mm-hmm.

Brett House (36:37.228)

How that translates when you start to go to brands, right? When you start to go outside of additional downloads, additional gaming, you know, kind of advertising to yourself in a sense, how do you start to attract brand dollars, right? Either and and brand dollars across the board, like brands that just want to reach gamers because it's time spent and from a brand awareness perspective, as well as the performance marketers. How would you think about that?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (36:46.813)

Mm-hmm.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (37:01.393)

I mean, I think from a I guess vertical expansion outside of games, right? The performance marketing ROAS piece for us as a s as a as a venture investor, that's probably where we spend most of our time looking at. And we see like immediate applications already in terms of how that framework of thinking, of tracking your cohorts, of doing predictive ROAS modeling. we see it translated already to the companies who are building consumer apps.

and and they take that framework and they run with it or in often cases they're gaming founders themselves before and they've taken that framework and they've just applied it to a new s new new new arena basically. So I think on the performance side, like as long as you're a business that cares about making money, rather than, you know, there's there's a yes. Yeah.

Brett House (37:44.931)

Well well and cares about consumer experience, right? Consistent consumer experience and relevant consumer experience, right? So you're not showing me something that's irrelevant to what I'm doing right now, even if it's just a brand ad for Nike versus you know, a buy this now sort of direct response ad, right?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (38:00.859)

Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I think one thing that it's not just like, hey, ROAS and and all of that. Like the other thing that I think they've really learned is creative volume and how to create that UA user acquisition creative volume flywheel. Like post ATT, we couldn't try a lot of things anymore. We didn't have it to the same level. You know, it came more probabilistic. And so I think in response to that, it was like, well.

Brett House (38:18.081)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (38:23.981)

we can't run a gazillion campaigns and know exactly then I'm gonna have to do it through creative volume and and and messaging and testing creatives. So, you know, the average, like not the average, but I think the top games if today, if you see them and these are people doing, you know, billion dollar a year revenues, they run anything from a thousand to two, two thousand new user acquisition creatives per month. So in any month they're running about two thousand to four thousand new creatives.

Brett House (38:31.808)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (38:50.757)

And that is like that requires the machinery to be built on its own. Now, pre AI, everybody was just dying. Like I think you could yeah.

Brett House (38:54.999)

Yeah.

No, I know, yeah, the the versioning, the versioning problem, it was like the promise of personalization could never truly be fulfilled because especially if you're like a retailer with a massive inventory or s a product that's got thousands of or services of the service company that has thousands of variations of offering, right? It it was just too much weight on the creative teams, on the agencies that support this. Right now AI kind of helps with the mass production of this stuff. and it's it's sort of like that, you know, and even procurement teams, and I've I was talking to an agency that we're that we're working with that's.

Completely replatforming. Procurement teams at brands were are still to this day charging on a per creative asset standpoint. They want to they want to negotiate with you on an asset-based level. And and like with AI, that's out the window because you could create a thousand variations to your point about these advertisers doing a thousand or two thousand or four thousand a month. That's been the the the promise of sort of programmatic and digital advertising, is like how do we version and personalize this?

based on all this audience data we have and you just it was just too hard to do until recently. So sounds like another thing that's being innovated on in the gaming world that's kind of passing through a little bit.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (40:02.139)

Yeah. And and I I think that was like post you know, post ATT. So twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, people were like, my god, what are we gonna do? So they started doing this and and those who figured it out and know how to do that, the ROAS performance and as well as as the creative volume, like their their machinery works like a monster, right? And that's what we've seen take to into con new consumer spaces and you do that.

Brett House (40:24.95)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (40:30.779)

And by the way, it's like you know, 2,000 to 4,000 creatives per game. So if you're a publisher that has 10 games, multiply that, right?

Brett House (40:35.966)

yeah, yeah, that number doesn't even t scratch the surface of how many variations, right? Because you might have a thousand games or a hundred games, yeah.

Rio (40:36.044)

I said to the same number, wow. Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (40:42.427)

That's yeah, and it's crazy. And you wanted to do it real time because you're like, hey, this creative is doing really well, actually. Let me see how much I can scale it. Okay, it works. I'm gonna now I have creative fatigue. I know I'm gonna juice this and it's gonna run out in like three weeks, right? And I also need to localize it. I wanna localize it because gamers are global. You know, they're in eight pack, they're US.

Rio (41:03.886)

Felicia, that's so interesting. So many other so many industries struggle with dynamic creative optimization, with personalization. You know, there's just so much creative fatigue that just gets overlooked. I just think it's fascinating. Yet again, another example gaming. I've worked with clients in telco and banking that they struggle to push out five variants to get them approved. And you were talking thousands here. It just shows how gaming is runs fast, innovates.

Brett House (41:24.94)

Yeah.

Yeah. Well

Rio (41:31.576)

Test stuff. I mean, that's really it's a really interesting. So speaking of that, okay, like looking at like AI, specifically agentic trading, agentic, just agentic generally. I I knowing gaming is so innovative, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what's going on. And there were some recent announcements with Inmobi and Scope 3 launching cell site agents using the ad CP protocol between brand and publishers. Love to hear like what are you doing in gaming related to this? it seems like

It's kind of the goal is to cut out some of the some of the middlemen and ad tech, some of the toll takers. Love to hear what's going on, your thoughts.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (42:08.593)

Yeah, I think you're exactly right. you so we we invest in advertising technology. We you know, we think it's it's it's part of I think a lot of investors, VCs, are afraid of it, maybe. If you say you run a and scale a business using performance marketing, they probably want to run for the hills and we're like, no, this is great. As long as you know how to do it profitably, great. and I think for the past few years, like we have all the wall gardens, we've got all the DSPs, the SSPs. But

Brett House (42:21.218)

Hmm.

Rio (42:21.219)

Yep.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (42:37.447)

The basically like the rules of this the the playground, the sandbox, basically the same, more or less, right? We're all optimizing, we're finding little areas of the playground that we can make ours. and I think what AI is doing is presenting this world and for the first time, like, okay, like we could disrupt it and the technology is is here, is within sight. And so you have people like in Mobi Building, kind of basically via Asian.

And and I I kinda respect that because in a way, if it works, they kind of disrupt their own business. And then you've got other people building their supply side agent. And I think that's very exciting. I think there's a lot of protocols and you know, these are basically you know, we need standardization. I do agree that, to allow agents to communicate each other. How do we pass on parameters? How do we bid? How do we how do we tell me what inventory is available? Yes.

Brett House (43:18.455)

Yeah.

Brett House (43:24.564)

Yeah, what's the governance around this? Yep.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (43:27.815)

But I think what's like, I'm like, we're not pushing it far enough. And again, I'm a VC, so I'm obviously trying to spoil how everything works and disrupt the rules is like, I'm like, why where's the consumer in this? We're still, you know, it's still just the buyers and the sellers negotiating with themselves, which is great because you know, we've got the middle people out of the way. But are we still kind of guessing on the parameters a little bit? We're, you know, we're inferring it and

Brett House (43:43.969)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (43:54.459)

What if you could have a consumer agent representing the consumer? And so the targeting and the data is basically it's explicit, it's permissioned. and in some cases maybe the agent would transact because God knows I don't really care about buying toilet paper. I just want to make sure I have toilet paper at home.

Brett House (44:10.496)

Yeah, we've talked about this a lot, Rhea, right? Yeah, th this is the yeah, and the permissioned piece of that, like for a gentic commerce or or otherwise is is what's critical. 'Cause if the 'cause the human agencies, hey, I've got an agent that I've now permissioned in a way that I that I'm telling it what I want it to do and it's going to do it's gonna operate within those parameters, right? Buy me toilet paper, buy me toothpaste. You it's not gonna go out and just buy random stuff, right, and hallucinate from a from a purchase perspective, but

That's and are you guys in involved at all or investing in or looking at agenda commerce?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (44:38.695)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (44:42.589)

I mean, this is something that I I would love to. I think we look at Agenda Commerce again, kind of coming from the the the games and the apps background. I think it maybe it's a little bit less relevant for us, but I think it's all part of that same space where look, right now we've got open source c consumer agents. I built my own open claw agent. It was a pain in the ass to set up, it's a pain in me to ask to invent. I hate it. It's not as easy.

Brett House (45:04.96)

Yeah, is it it's not as easy as it looks, right? It

Rio (45:06.412)

I yeah, and then it crashes it cra then it craps out and it like and then it doesn't work. Yeah, no, it's not it's it's not easy. Yeah.

Brett House (45:10.752)

Yeah. Yeah. And then you're like, how do and then you spend countless hours trying to get the thing to not to to I I had a I did an Arames, yeah, and you're like, Yeah, people are like, anybody can do this. I'm like, No, not really. You've got to spend countless hours

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (45:11.151)

Exactly.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (45:16.135)

Basically. Yes.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (45:21.519)

No, no. If my grandma if my mom can't do it, then not everybody can do it, right? And so then it still remains kind of the the purview of somebody who is technical. And it's also like, then Anthropic decides no, you can't use my my claw and and then now you've got to change your your freaking models and everything. So it's but it's it's very interesting because they are also getting better in a way. Like you could see the progress. They're better at having persistent memory, large like context, right?

Brett House (45:25.779)

Yeah.

Rio (45:46.512)

it's so much better? Yep. Yeah.

Brett House (45:48.609)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rio (45:51.842)

The persistent memory is so much better. I mean, I noticed that even use even using like like even consumer facing ones, you know, that I gr it's w wild but AIs, everyone has kind of access to the same tools, but but even using like a basic subscription to Chat GPT or to or to Claude, yeah.

Brett House (45:53.855)

totally. I

Brett House (46:06.206)

Yeah. You should see the the episode guides that Rio pumps up for because we are we're like this is there's a ton of volume. And and I and I've noticed them over the last like six months of just how they've improved to the point where you're like, wow. I mean i i like is it's it's just reflective of our own brains and it's learning and getting better and better and better and better, right?

Rio (46:12.248)

We're we're AI driven. We are AI driven.

Rio (46:26.604)

Well well well yeah. I mean I I I I mean I tell it I need to write up a sort of guide about this person to post a LinkedIn and post a couple of articles. I usually dictate kind of what I'm thinking, but it's I Fred's your point. It used to be I would spend still spend an hour or so editing, but now it's some of them it's only ten, fifteen minutes. Some of them it's like I was like, this is so good. This is as good, if not better, then I could have put it together. It's it's really incredible.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (46:27.366)

Exactly, yes.

Brett House (46:45.396)

Yeah. And so we put we'll put forty of these together in like a day for like so like less than a day, I mean a couple hours, right? And you've got forty or fifty really good with bios, you know, it's that kind of stuff that just makes our lives a little bit easier, right? From a content production and and project management perspective, right? We're off

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (46:56.455)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (47:02.865)

Yeah, and and exactly. And it's like it it to your point, it learns more. So it's not just like, Hey, I'm telling you this, this and this. It knows that. But it's also gonna build on that with like, Yeah, you know, Brett, you say this, but like, you know, most of the time you actually do that.

Rio (47:19.086)

Yeah. This is what when you say this is what you usually mean, Brett. So yeah, we

Brett House (47:19.135)

Yeah.

Brett House (47:23.54)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so so another question around back to that the idea of like the agentic ad stack and agentic media buying, right? You know, so everyone's racing to figure out what that looks like. How much is it gonna be is it gonna be the agency hold companies hold codes that control it, or is it gonna be within each ecosystem, the Googles or the or the Metas, which is extinct? So as an investor, like what do you what like 'cause you you've got perspective for especially from the gaming industry and the innovation you guys bring to market. What's the what's this map missing?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (47:23.567)

Yeah, yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (47:42.267)

Mm-hmm.

Brett House (47:52.044)

From an agentic ad stack perspective.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (47:53.629)

I mean, I think we have people building the buyer agents, we have people building the selling side agents. What we don't have is the consumer agent representation. And I think, you know, there's a lot of stuff around foundation models and and that that is all important and stuff. But if you own the consumer agent layer, you have data, that's massive. You are, you know, the next I think trillion dollar company, basically. If if you imagine it, even in a game, right? Like, hey, I want to serve you and ad for

McDonald's or whatever. and and they'll be like, Well, this is not a good time right now. The publisher can say this is not a good time, mid-game session, right? Try like five minutes later. We've got five minutes basically for you guys to figure out something here. The consumer agent's able to say, like, well, she likes McSpicy. That's that's my thing. I love the McSpicy.

Rio (48:42.776)

Well, Felicia, by the way, that's a that's that's a really good point. In fact, I think something that's been missing in advertis digital advertising, there's never been anyone representing consumer, let's face it, right? I mean, like it's been it's been it's been, you know, even even before programmatic, it was about how can we pump out as many impressions, as many emails, as many as this, how can we drive people through a conversion funnel? Yeah. And even even programmatic, it's been about how can we you get as much reach as as as

Brett House (48:52.791)

Yeah.

Brett House (49:02.772)

Retargeting people across multiple channels. Yep.

Rio (49:10.112)

as reached as possible for the lowest CPMs. Who cares that people receive the same ads? Maybe now it's happening to C T V you'll see the same ads. So it's like I don't think anyone's ever been representing a consumer, which has kind of been why why a lot of people think are down on advertising, which, you know, despite maybe you know, maybe more than they should be. So I that's a really good point.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (49:11.74)

Yeah.

Brett House (49:24.428)

Yeah.

Brett House (49:28.214)

Yeah, no, that's a real and this is I think this is a whole another topic. I think we could have another episode on on what what is a consumer based agent. Imagine and tell and tell me if you know more than we do do, which I think you do, on this topic. But if each if e each individual, if each consumer had an agent that represented them, they can basically set rules and parameters of when and how they want to be advertised to, let's say for let's say for access to content.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (49:52.015)

Exactly.

Brett House (49:54.827)

Right? Like like it's a fast play, like that, you know, for free ad supported television, or it's a content play where you're where you're not a subscriber, maybe you are a subscriber or whatever. You're you're you've taken a a lower tier subscription with the New York Times, and so you're accepting some advertising and again you can set parameters around that. Is that how you're thinking about that? And is gaming doing some of that right now?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (50:18.023)

Think yes, that's how I'm thinking about it. That you know, we can set permissions and it knows us well. Like, hey, you know, Rio Saturday's date night, right? So, like, you know, don't surf between seven to nine, right? Because that's a bad time. But hey, you know, after weekdays, after 8 p.m., go for it, you know. it can also be like, I really freaking hate this particular hotel that I stayed in in Miami, and I will never stay in that hotel over my dead body. But let's say, let's say they choose to advertise to me. My agent would be like,

Brett House (50:29.525)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (50:47.717)

Look, she hates you. Like so if you wanna advertise, go ahead. But like

Brett House (50:49.214)

Yeah, you said you set you set bra behavioral, contextual, time of day parameters around the advertising. Imagine they're talking about consumer and control. That's a really interesting concept.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (51:00.635)

Yeah. And I could be like, look, you wanna advertise to me, you pay hundred X C PM. Let's you know, that's how much she hates you.

Rio (51:01.422)

Felicia.

But it is funny what if it's funny but it's funny what she said. So I used to tell can with consultants when it first joined, like you every but it it's hard for people to understand w how much money should I spend in on on a hotel per night. I used to tell people, listen, like we're not we're we're not animals, right? We you should you should if you're be traveling for business, you should stay in something that's decent, right? Like I'm not saying spend a thousand dollars a night, but like use your discretion, right? Don't spend above this. But if hotels are expensive because it's New York, yeah, you're gonna have to pay a lot, right? And the a the client will need that so like

Brett House (51:08.928)

Ha ha ha.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (51:34.853)

Yeah.

Rio (51:36.354)

So my maybe my agent would then, if like the days in tried to advertise to me, I I I would say we're not animals, don't even bother.

Brett House (51:43.179)

Ha ha ha ha!

Yeah, the agent would literally communicate back to like, You're complete you're completely off the mark. Right.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (51:49.245)

We're not animals, go away.

Rio (51:50.414)

Or or or Spear Airlines or like Frontier tried to sell me a seat. It was just don't don't even try. We have self respect. That's so

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (51:55.299)

Like no, not you.

Brett House (51:58.561)

Yeah. No, I mean I I think this is a fascinating topic, I mean the the idea of a consumer beast agent and it's just never you y I think you're the first person I've heard talk about that, right?

Rio (52:06.764)

It it's totally needed. I want I want my Asian to do that to represent me.

Brett House (52:10.582)

We we hear about it in the t in con in the in the context of a gen e commerce. Like I've got an agent that will go out and do XYZ for me, but not in the t in in terms of content experience, right? And like yeah, and in the control.

Rio (52:22.23)

And more of that, like but services service preference, everything, right, Brett? So you you mean you could you could have it really represent your inter your i if i if it would have a fiduciary responsibility to represent you and your interests as your agent, right?

Brett House (52:35.468)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (52:35.975)

Yeah. I I think I think of it as like everybody has a PA in their in their pocket, right? And your PA's helping you with the stuff that you don't want to do, like the the grocery shopping. but it's also it's kind of like your shield, like this is you you can come through and not you, go away. and and to your yeah.

Brett House (52:51.646)

Yeah. Now have ha ha have you programmed your open claw to have some of those levels of control or do or did you just get so tired of tweaking and tuning it that you're

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (53:00.099)

No, I still have them and I think I I use like travel booking is such a pain in the ass. So like I I've I've I've helped I've given it all the markdowns it needs to help me research, you know, travel and stuff like that. If like if if I'm not on holiday, like I just need to get there for work. Like come like I said, as like as long as I'm not, you know, living like an animal, that's fine. Yeah. Let's it's pretty straightforward. You know what airlines I frequent flyer miles, I wanna max them out and all that. So

Brett House (53:11.019)

Yeah yeah.

Brett House (53:18.786)

You're not like comparison shopping. It's pretty simple. It's like, yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (53:28.433)

That that's great. and I think to your point, like, is gaming doing that yet? No, because I think again, we're still missing that piece if does everybody have a consumer agent? I think it needs to be as simple as like setting up a social media profile. If you can set up a it should be like setting up a TikTok account, right? Or or or or an Instagram account. It needs to be that simple for everybody to do it.

Brett House (53:46.625)

Yeah.

And feed it some context, right? Capture some information about me. Link you know, there's gonna be linkages to various other places where it could read and gather more context about you, whether it's your LinkedIn account or your Facebook. Yeah, and then say now now I'm gonna set you off to do X, Y, and Z. Right, for me.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (53:58.297)

Yeah, exactly.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (54:04.431)

Exactly. And I think we see teams a lot of people are building kind of that agentic harnessing or for agent workflows for like enterprise SMBs, not so much for the consumer. I think we also see people building kind of consumer wearables, right? So it started with your friend and it you know, there was a humane pin like in twenty twenty four, didn't quite work out. and maybe the hardware is needed. I I I'm on the fence about that one.

Brett House (54:31.988)

You're a little skeptical. Yeah, yeah. Cause you could you could integrate with the existing hardware systems. I mean your your your Apple Watch, your your phones.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (54:33.573)

I'm I don't I'm it's just

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (54:37.849)

Maybe, yeah, maybe that's a faster adoption. I get it. Like, okay, like I have an aura ring, but that's also because the aura ring was able to meet read, you know, biometric data in a way that like the watch couldn't, right? It was like more yeah, it was very unique. And so I was like, Okay, I'm gonna wear this. And it's it's so you know, it's subtle, it's it's it's an accessory that anybody would have. So, you know, you don't really think twice about putting it on because it's not ugly as well. But everybody like you

Brett House (54:49.012)

Was pretty unique, yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (55:03.535)

you know, some people have multiple things. They've got an Apple Watch or whoop or I'm gonna add another one. I don't know. I think you need to have a very specific use case. But again, I think this things are coming together, right? Like you have MCPs, you're able to connect them to your email, your Slack, your WhatsApps even. there is for me, like when I was setting up my agent, I was like, there's a security issue here that I am still concerned about. And so

Brett House (55:29.815)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (55:33.125)

Again, like if you have consumer agents as a service, really, ideally you're extracting that worry away from the user 'cause, you know, you're gonna be on top of running security and and and and

Brett House (55:42.358)

Rio, I think this is our next startup idea, Matt. I think consumer agents as a service. It's like

Rio (55:45.14)

It's a gr that is a massive business. You're you're yeah, Philip, you're right. It's like a tr it's a trillion dollar business. If someone nails this, I mean I mean they're gonna they're gonna do quite well. I mean, there's such a need for it.

Brett House (55:54.92)

It seems like some yeah, a lot of open opportunity.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (55:57.873)

Yeah, I think it's also opens up new opportunities in terms of other businesses, right? 'Cause I think one of the things that we we talk about internally we're also like consumer security is is so I think still underserved. And I mean like beyond password managers, and things like that, because you get so many scams and I guarantee you your hackers are using AI to improve their targeting.

Rio (55:58.522)

Brett House (56:22.294)

Yeah, and it's gonna and it's gonna get more more and more the compute power, I mean it's gonna in our lifetime is we're gonna we're gonna have quantum computing. So that's gonna even even compound what they're capable of doing now, right? So all this there's gonna be a complete revolution in terms of security tech, right? Because it it's just not sufficient to to right.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (56:42.415)

It is not. It is not. I think like I think in Singapore, for example, like these these kind of you know, there's all sorts of scams. There's love scams, there's like senior citizen scams, but they managed to scam people like out of billions of dollars, I think, last year. just regular citizens, senior citizens, retirees. And do you think, you know, you're probably walking around and you're thinking, I would never fall for that. But like some of them are really good.

Like, I've gotten those emails, I've gotten those text messages.

Brett House (57:09.09)

And they're and they're using that g it's probably that gaming innovation tech that is powering this customer acquisition drive to spoof no, but I I've I've heard those stories from my own parents about, you know, they live in a in a a community in Massachusetts with, you know, a lot of eighty year olds and just people just the simplest stuff and just getting giving away their identity because they they thought that yeah, they thought there was an emergency in their in their bank account or whatever it might be, the simplest stuff.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (57:33.117)

Basically.

Brett House (57:38.646)

But so th this has been awesome. yeah, seriously. you know, you never sometimes when you don't know someone ahead of time, you just don't know what you're walking to. And Phil, you're awesome. It's been terrific. It's really cool to hear about play. but I think we should move into quick quick hits. Yeah.

Rio (57:40.974)

That's been fun. Yeah, yeah, it's great.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (57:51.815)

Thank you so much. Sure.

Rio (57:53.026)

two let's do quick hits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This has been fun stuff. I think we could have gone on for hours one of those.

Brett House (57:58.305)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean we did a whole episode on consumer facing apps, AI, right? agents, I should say. so I'll so I'll start. So what do you think one consumer tech trend that's massively we've talked a lot about the underhyped and the under appreciated value of of gaming tech. What about the overhyped? What's been being massively overhyped right now from a consumer tech perspective that you think?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (57:59.868)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (58:23.058)

Mm.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (58:27.485)

I think a lot of like the comp companion stuff is probably overhyped. I think in a way and I I wanna be careful here, I think the traditional way of doing micro dramas, which is like we'll go out and we'll film a bunch of things, I think that model doesn't really scale and doesn't really work. And obviously I'm I'm I'm tuning my own horn here because we inv I invest in a company that's doing

Brett House (58:50.335)

Yep.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (58:55.351)

AI UGC for micro dramas, right? Because I think that's the only way you can really master that content tread build that we talked about. But I I I don't think that's the other method is scalable. yeah, so I would say those are two things that I think are overhyped, at least on the consumer AI side.

Brett House (59:02.87)

Yeah.

Brett House (59:12.066)

Yeah.

Breah.

Rio (59:17.102)

one trend that's massively

Brett House (59:17.546)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (59:19.133)

He's writing down the idea about like w Nick's business can see rage.

Rio (59:23.778)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I'm I yeah, I I am actually taking some notes. I love that idea by the way. one trend that's massively overhyped or or underhyped, really your choice.

Brett House (59:24.65)

Yeah, he's taking he's taking notes, Phil. You're so insightful that he's like, I'm gonna I'm taking notes.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (59:40.861)

I think we did overhyped, so I'll do underhyped. I think we talked about consumer circ security. I think the other part is if everybody has consumer agents, we're probably gonna need some insurance. 'Cause there's no Phil safe proof for like your consumer agent kind of, you know.

Brett House (59:54.976)

Yeah. All the services around that, right? From a yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (59:59.621)

Yeah. Yeah. Think about it. Like, okay, so Visa says, you know, you can they set they've integrated into Chat GPT now where you can transact and you can set permissions for how much your agent can spend, right? But it's tech. We all, you know, anyone who's built, worked in tech knows that things will break. There will be a screw up. So yeah, there's all the there's always a screw up. So we're gonna need now a gen tech insurance, basically, in case my agent screws up and buys like

Rio (01:00:16.514)

Yep. They always do. Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:00:28.485)

A hundred thousand piano in the middle of the night. Like I don't want that piano.

Brett House (01:00:31.168)

Ha ha ha.

Rio (01:00:33.398)

But it but it but it's funny, that that's been the one criticism of quote unquote agenda commerce. Some people have been saying that, to prevent things like that from happening, that's why it probably never will happen, which I think is yeah, obviously that is a concern, but I think that concern is overblown because it'll these things will probably slowly people will get used to them and as they gain more comfort, they'll begin to do things. You're maybe and even once we have a high level of comfort, things like that will probably still happen. Because to your point, things break.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:00:59.185)

It it will happen. I I I think it's like if you think about how people change from Google search to going to, you know, Chat GPT, whatever is your choice, and and basically talking to it and asking it to do the search for you, it's a shift in platform. Google's been dominant, you know, as a search thing for for ages. Consumer behavior changes.

Brett House (01:01:17.654)

Yeah. And consumers and because yeah, and consumers have voted, right? You see the adoption of every LLM that's out there and it's just astronomical how fast their growth has been. consumers have voted, right? That is the the there was a pent-up demand for that type of like we didn't want to know a lot more blue links being served to us and and and you know, it's like you ask a question and you're being pitched product and I'm like, that that seems to be disconnect disconnected from what I

Went there for, right? And I think LLMs are filling in the blank of

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:01:50.183)

Well, but I also think like I don't think people have a problem with advertising. I think they have a problem when it's irrelevant and it's poor and it's the wrong time. Like I don't care if it's an ad, if it's the r the answer I looked for and I'm satisfied with it, so so be it.

Brett House (01:01:57.109)

Yes.

Yeah.

Rio (01:02:05.816)

Yeah. By the way, I totally agree with you. And I think I would add to that, people also don't have a problem providing some in some information to to brands, to to differ organizations if they're getting something valuable in return, that value exchange, right? So

Brett House (01:02:19.361)

Yeah.

Exactly. The value exchange, people are yeah, they've the consumers have voted for that. They're willing to pay for fast television, ad-supported television, ad-supported content. right? you know, we all we all are spending exponentially more on on subscriptions. Not everybody can do that. Advertising has a role to play to continue to keep some of this stuff available to the large larger segments of the of the world.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:02:22.959)

Exactly. Exactly.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:02:42.812)

Yeah.

And if you think about it, like, so remember when Netflix introduced like the ad supported tier and everybody was, my God, they're you know, it's gonna they're it's gonna be terrible. They're doing great. Their ad revenue is growing. It's it they're doing great. I I think you know, people understand advertising if I think about like data and are they concerned about sharing their data? If we were, we wouldn't still be on Instagram. We would not be on TikTok, but we are and when when

Brett House (01:02:57.697)

Yeah.

Brett House (01:03:12.928)

Yeah. In exchange. It's all about getting the value exchange, right?

Rio (01:03:15.34)

Well, yeah, that's why that's one reason why the World Gardens have done so well, is they know who you are, that you've you're always you're always signing, you're always credentialized, and they're able to based on the information they have in you, serve it very relevant, highly targeted advertising that people generally don't have a problem with. So it's a good point.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:03:19.111)

Yeah.

Brett House (01:03:30.208)

Yeah. So la last question. So if one and we'll we should have a session too, because this is this is fascinating. We'll get we'll get you we'll get your your Finnish founders on the on the on the podcast as well. If you can invest in one category, considering what you guys do for a living, you know, that's gonna be the next trillion dollar company in the next ten years or the next five years, what would it be?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:03:40.252)

Yeah.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:03:51.597)

There's actually two things. and obviously one is the company that's building consumer agents for everybody. I want to invest in that. I'm actively looking for that, so please talk to me. and I think the second one, you know, outside of what play invests in for me would be like just women's health. It's it's chronically underserved, under-researched, misunderstood, misserved, but there's a massive market. I mean, how many women are out there? And there's a real need.

Brett House (01:04:18.718)

Yeah. Yeah, and it's especially when you start to move away from like the the the wealthy sort of sub segments and highly industrialized nations. Once you start to kind of go into the long tail of women everywhere across the world, yeah, there's probably a huge drop off from the the rich countries to the to the less rich countries, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Democratize that. That's that's great. So you still have you still there's a s there's a social justice warrior inside you there somewhere, right? And doing good

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:04:20.13)

and and I think that's like a huge thing.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:04:45.927)

Some somewhere, somewhere, obviously. I like I like to I like I like it when we can do both things, entertain and do good for for people.

Brett House (01:04:47.126)

Doing good for the doing good for the world. We won't call it social justice, right?

Brett House (01:04:55.762)

Yeah, exactly. Makes us makes us sleep better at night. But well thanks Felicia. This was really good, a really good conversation. We really enjoyed it. thanks for the time. I'm glad that it's not midnight in Singapore, but but what, seven PM, eight PM in in London?

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:05:12.313)

It's in the evening in London. It's summer. Sun's gonna go on for a little longer, so it's it's a good time.

Brett House (01:05:17.088)

Yeah. And if you're ever in New York City, p hit me up. you know, Rio lives in Denver but is often in New York and and we could certainly meet up. But for everybody that made it this far in the podcast, we'll have more episodes like this going forward. you can find us on w dot cigalnoise.ai, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. And thanks for joining and thank you, Phil.

Rio (01:05:38.84)

Thank you.

Phylicia | GP @ Play Ventures (01:05:39.037)

Thank you.