Welcome back to Founder’s Quest here in 2025. Our first episode of the year is with Heather Cerlan, founder of NEARstudios. After seeing the announcement of their game Hawthorn last year, I wanted to learn more about Heather’s journey to that moment. An artist being the galvanizing founder of a team is on the more rare side and learning how Heather found the spark to start a studio and navigated that journey was both interesting and inspiring.

I hope you enjoy hearing her story as much as I had recording it.

As the last episode of the year, I sat down with my co-founder at Jam & Tea Studios to have him share his founding journey. Hearing his perspective of the journey that we've shared really emphasized to me how each individual's founding journey is truly unique. I look forward to talking to more cofounders of folks that I've already interviewed next year. For now, we'll be taking a bit of a break over the holidays -- though its really because I've been fundraising over November/December and haven't gotten a chance to record much until January. I hope you've enjoyed the series thus far and look forward to more episodes in 2025!

Irena is a kindred spirit for me. She founded Unleashed Games in 2023 to pursue making games that tackled social design and brought players together. She hasn’t always wanted to start a studio, but after spending a career at places like Scopely, 38 Studios, and Blizzard working on World of Warcraft, she didn’t see anyone focused on the problems or opportunities she was most passionate about. If no one else is doing it, the sometimes you need to take the lead.

I deeply enjoyed my conversation with Irena, I hope you do as well. Let’s jump in