From ASO to UA Funding: My Journey Through Gaming and Into Plan A Games

If I look back at my career, there is one thing that shows up every single time: every company I’ve joined, I’ve joined to start something new. A new division, a new business line, a new market. No existing playbook handed to me. Just a blank page and a lot of “figure it out.”

Now that I’m at Plan A Games, and I say “at” loosely because I actually joined since day 0.

I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on that pattern. And honestly? I think I love it. The pressure, the constant need to improve, the challenges that come out of nowhere… It’s kind of my thing.

Lab Cave, 2018. Selling Something Nobody Knew They Needed

When I joined Lab Cave, they were already one of the top ASO agencies in mobile gaming, with big clients like FunPlus and IGG and a solid reputation. But I wasn’t brought in to run what already existed. I was there to open a brand new business line: selling App Store Optimization (ASO) services to non-gaming apps.

Sounds simple enough. It was not.

Non-gaming apps at the time had zero education around ASO. Every single call, every meeting, was also a lesson. Why does this matter? What even is it? We weren’t just pitching, we were teaching. And it took almost a full year before we closed our first deal. After that, more came.

My manager at the time told me to read “How to Make Friends and Influence People.” I still recommend it to anyone who asks. It genuinely changed how I approach every conversation: less about convincing, more about listening.

Homa Games, 2020. Where I Learned Everything About Games

I moved to Homa Games in 2020. At the time, they had around 50 employees. I joined because Ilan was leaving the company, and they needed someone to continue the work he was doing on signing publishing deals for casual games.

This is honestly where I learned everything I know about games. I had to run and oversee projects across UA, product, and monetization, all at once. A solitaire tripeaks game, a domino game, a water sort puzzle. It sounds niche, but the education was massive. UA for games is completely different from UA for apps: the optimizations, the player behavior, the metrics that actually matter. We decided early on to focus only on casual games, and that focus paid off.

In my first year at Homa Games, I signed 5 publishing deals. The team I was part of went on to grow and take a different direction after I left, developing board and classic games, with a lot of success. Amazing to watch.

Back to Lab Cave. A Different Mission This Time

After Homa, I went back to Lab Cave to help them make the transition from ASO agency to a publishing and M&A company. My time there was short, but I closed the acquisition of ZooCraft, a game that is still performing well today. The team at Lab Cave has done an amazing job improving it and keeping it alive. Proud of that one.

Big Fish Games. I Couldn’t Say No

And then Big Fish Games showed up. I couldn’t say no. A company with such a long history in the industry, and the chance to work with Gary, Huy, Glen, Mike, and Rob to open a brand new publishing division from scratch. Again.

We helped secure two publishing deals over two years, and then… we all left the company. A lot happened. But what that chapter left me with was something more valuable: a team. The same people who built that publishing division together are the ones who built Plan A Games.

What that chapter left me with was something more valuable than any deal: a team. The same people who built that publishing division together are the ones who built Plan A Games.

And Then There Was Plan A Games

Gary shared with me the goal he had to start his own company with Huy, Rob, and Mike, to offer UA funding in a way that nobody else was doing it.

At the time, UA funding wasn’t yet a big category. There were maybe 1-2 players in the space. The dominant model out there, cohort lending, works like this: studios borrow money tied to specific user cohorts, and if those cohorts don’t perform exactly as projected, the studio gets penalized. It’s a model that sounds logical on paper but in practice often punishes the early ROAS volatility that every game goes through at launch.

We looked at that model and thought: this doesn’t actually serve studios well. So we built something different.

What Makes Plan A Games Different

• We fund at the game level, not the cohort level. We look at the full lifecycle of the game.
• Our interest rate is defined upfront and doesn’t change based on ROAS fluctuations.
• You only pay interest on the capital you actually draw, not the full facility.
• 100% of your game’s revenue goes back to you. You decide how and when to repay, with total flexibility, leaving you with a stronger cash position.
• No equity. No creative control. No penalties for early UA variance.

We’re also backed by Fortress Investment Group, which means we have institutional capital behind us and the ability to move seriously and at scale with the right studio partners.

If 10 companies are offering UA funding, all of them are doing cohort lending… and then there’s us. That’s actually a great place to be. We’re not bankers. We’re game people.

I’ll be honest. When I first started explaining our model, I thought our competitors educating the market on cohort lending was making our job harder. If everybody only knows what cohort lending is, how do we explain that we’re something entirely different?

But now I see it the other way. We’ve sat on the studio side. We’ve run UA, product, and monetization. We built the model we wish had existed when we were on the other side of the table.

What Starting From Scratch Keeps Teaching Me

A few things that have stuck with me across every chapter:

• Always have a positive attitude and be willing to keep learning. Every “no” I got at Lab Cave in year one led to a “yes” eventually.
• Feedback is a gift. If someone takes the time to tell you how to improve, they’ve invested in you. Embrace it, don’t defend against it.
• Listen more than you talk, and ask a lot of questions. Especially when you’re new somewhere.
• En que la sigue, la consigue. It’s a Spanish saying that roughly translates to: whoever keeps going, gets there. It has always proven true.
• Think about the next point, not the last one. I played competitive tennis. You can lose 5 points in a row and still win the game. Same in business. I’m always thinking about how to win the next one, even when the last few didn’t go my way.

Every role I’ve had started with a blank page. Plan A Games is just the latest one, and honestly, the most exciting one yet.

If you’re a mobile game studio thinking about UA funding and want to understand what options actually exist, beyond what you’ve probably already heard about, I’d love to talk.

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