The Secret to Building a Social Gaming Empire: Justin Waldron

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.

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.