Secret Stash

Few people have shaped an entire national gaming ecosystem — but Gigi Levy-Weiss has. Known as the “Godfather of Israeli Gaming,” Levy-Weiss helped kickstart the country’s modern game industry as a founder of Playtika, early investor in Moon Active, and now General Partner at NFX.

In this episode of Secret Stash, hosts Justin Kan and Archie Stonehill sit down with Gigi to talk about how he went from Air Force pilot to gaming mogul, the wild origin story of Playtika, and why he believes the next major disruption in games won’t come from content — it’ll come from distribution.

In this episode of Secret Stash, we go behind the scenes with Stash's newest employees, Galleon co-founders Or Briga and Shai Arnon — two serial entrepreneurs who have lived the full spectrum of startup chaos and came out sharper on the other side. Or and Shai pull back the curtain on the gut-check moment when they realized their previous company had hit a wall, why they decided to shut it down on their own terms, and what convinced them to immediately start building together again.

They also walk us through the unexpected path that led them deep into the world of native D2C: building APKs from scratch, navigating publisher dependencies, and powering payment flows that now drive hundreds of millions in annual transaction volume for SuperPlay’s hit titles. Along the way, they break down why the industry’s relationship with platforms is shifting, how new rulings opened the floodgates for alternative payments, and why 2026 will belong to studios that embrace native distribution.

This is a conversation about resilience, timing, and the bold bets that redefine how games connect with players. If you care about the future of mobile, monetization, or the craft of building products in the trenches, you’ll want to hear this one.

In this episode of Secret Stash, we sit down with Stash’s new CEO, Henry Lowenfels, and CPO, Spencer Tucker, for a candid conversation about their journeys through the gaming industry and why they believe direct-to-consumer (D2C) is the future of play. From Scopely’s scrappy early days and the breakout success of titles like Yahtzee With Buddies and Star Trek Fleet Command, to WWE’s pioneering D2C experiments and the rise of hypercasual hits at Homa, Henry and Spencer share hard-won lessons from building some of the industry’s most enduring franchises.

They also unpack how the D2C model is evolving, what it takes to build a successful strategy from scratch, and why the next wave of innovation will come from aligning player experience with publisher sustainability. If you’re a game developer, publisher, or just curious about the business of games, this is an inside look you won’t want to miss.

If you’ve read one too many headlines about the so-called death of gaming, Frank Gibeau, CEO of Zynga, has a message for you: the doom and gloom is over. In this episode of Secret Stash, Justin Kan and Archie Stonehill sit down with Frank, who cut his teeth as a product marketer at EA in the '90s and later led the company through its mobile transformation, to talk about why he’s more optimistic than ever.Frank shares his lessons from three decades in the trenches - from cartridge-era publishing in 1990’s to rebuilding EA, and steering Zynga into what it is today. From postmortems on Shaq Fu to what it really takes to fix a broken culture and scale a mobile business, this episode is packed with stories, strategy, and an honest look at what’s next for gaming. Be sure to stay til the end to hear Frank's big industry secret! Read the highlights here: http://dev.stash.gg/blog/secret-stash-ep-8-frank-gibeau00:00 - Intro1:40 - Gaming ISN'T dead5:58 - Electronic Arts in the 1990s9:13 - PM is the best job in the world11:04 - Dealing with flops in the 1990s13:55 - Getting a PhD in mobile16:20 - 3 lessons from EA to Zynga16:29 - Hero to zero to hero19:56 - Fixing the company culture25:52 - Fixing the leaky bucket32:30 - M&A for studio talent35:16 - Winning the Turkish market40:21 - Selling Zynga to Take Two48:27 - Going hard on direct-to-consumer56:58 - The impact of AI in gaming1:02:58 - Frank's big industry secret

Gaming isn’t about blockbuster budgets or flashy graphics - it’s about fun. And somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten that.

Most games would kill for a community like Plarium’s RAID: Shadow Legends - and the team behind Hellhades has a lot to do with that. What started out as a hobby YouTube channel, is now a massive community with more than 225,000 followers as well as the go-to website for RAID news, guides, and interactive tools. Recently, the Hellhades team decided to turn the world of game development. They founded the studio Fateless and in 10 quick weeks, raised $6M from their community.

At age 19, Justin Waldron built an app that would go on to have the biggest IPO since Google. That company was Zynga, and it completely changed the way the world played games. 

Listen now for behind-the-scenes stories that shaped an era of social gaming, as well as Justin Waldron’s own secret for scaling up Zynga and setting it apart from the competition. 

In this episode of Secret Stash, co-hosts Archie Stonehill and Justin Kan sit down with Justin Waldron to talk through: 

👉 origins of Zynga and the edge they found in the market

👉 the innovative business model that helped Zynga win

👉 the company’s love/hate relationship with Facebook

👉 rise and fall of social gaming (and who’s to blame for the fall) 

Read the highlights here: https://dev.stash.gg/blog/secret-stash-ep-4-matt-ball

0:00 - Intro 

1:21 - Justin’s first Facebook app

3:45 - Building Zynga Poker

6:10 - Facebook’s missing puzzle piece

9:00 - Browser power

11:46 - The winning freemium model 

20:35 - Scaling horizontally

28:33 - A culture of experimentation

33:57 - Love/hate with Facebook

36:57 - The rise of mobile

38:49 - Apple as a gatekeeper

42:17 - Amazing corp dev

43:47 - Scaling organically

48:09 - The fall of social gaming

59:36 - Telegram’s killing it

1:09:22 - Crypto

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Stash is the first of its kind direct-to-consumer platform for games.

Learn more about Stash here: https://dev.stash.gg/

Matt Ball literally wrote the book on the metaverse - with a new update out in late July. So who better to chat all things metaverse and distribution with? 

Dennis Fong has had an INSANE career. By age 19, not only had he earned the title as the world’s first esports champion and pro gamer, but also became CEO of a 100-person gaming media company. He's even had a League of Legends character named after him.

2:33 - Dennis’ start in esports

4:14 - The famous Wall Street Journal article

7:38 - Family reactions

9:05 - Winning a Ferrari 

12:25 - The birth of esports

14:52 - Who’s Thresh?

15:39 - Esport rivalries 

18:37 - Organic communities 

22:20 - Fatality takes over

25:19 - Critical mechanics

28:05 - Struggles of a young founder

33:59 - Spinning out Lithium

39:10 - Xfire innovations

48:06 - Raptor

50:13 - GGWP and anti-toxicity

1:04:45 - Distribution

1:07:08 - RIP Avicii 

Hit the Subscribe button wherever you listen to your podcasts!
Stash is the first of its kind direct-to-consumer platform for games.
Learn more about Stash here: https://dev.stash.gg/

It was 2007 and Robin Chan was running the mobile data business at Verizon while Justin Kan was rolling out JustinTV’s first prototype - a camera strapped to his head (literally). It was the perfect meetcute: Justin needed inexpensive mobile data to livestream his day-to-day and Robin had access to tons of it (In fact, Robin was the first one to put YouTube on a cell phone!). Turns out the deal didn’t go as planned though, and the two went their separate ways.

Hit the Subscribe button wherever you listen to your podcasts!
Stash is the first of its kind direct-to-consumer platform for games.
Learn more about Stash here: https://dev.stash.gg/