PitchMI Finalist Spotlight: Adrenaline Interactive

In this episode, guest host Pete Martin talks with Max Albert, Founder and CEO of Adrenaline Interactive and a PitchMI Championship finalist, about transforming how brands and video games work together to create more immersive, measurable advertising experiences.

Max shares how Adrenaline Interactive uses AI to integrate branded products directly into game environments—making ads feel native to gameplay while delivering real sales attribution for advertisers. He reflects on his path from building a Michigan-based game studio to launching a venture-backed startup, the early support and connections that helped shape the company’s growth, and the realities of scaling in the rapidly evolving gaming and AI landscape. As a PitchMI finalist, Max also discusses preparation for the $1 million Championship and offers advice for founders building in Michigan.

Host: Pete Martin
Guests: Max Albert, Founder and CEO, Adrenaline Interactive
Producers: Jenna McNamara and Doug Snitgen
Music: "Devil on Your Shoulder" by Will Harrison, licensed via Epidemic Sound

Stay connected with the MSU Research Foundation by following us on LinkedIn or subscribing to our email newsletters.

Transcript

Introduction and Guest Overview

David Washburn 0:04

Welcom e to the MSU Research Foundation podcast. Today, guest host Pete Martin, Director of Portfolio Management at the MSU Research Foundation, he is the lead on our PitchMI competition. Today, Pete's gonna talk to Adrenaline Interactive, which is led by Max Albert. I hope you enjoyed the episode.

Pete Martin 0:34

Hey everybody, my name is Pete Martin. I'm the director of portfolio management here at the MSU Research Foundation, and I have the pleasure to be joined today by Max Albert, the CEO and founder at Adrenaline Interactive. Hey Max.

Max Albert 0:46

Hey Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Martin 0:47

How you doing, man?

Max Albert 0:48

Dude, I'm doing great.

Pete Martin 0:49

For those that uh can't um for those that don't know, uh we are sitting in the Bamboo offices in Ann Arbor on a Saturday morning because Max is a very busy person. He's flying out today. And uh I appreciate you taking the time, man.

Max Albert 1:02

Oh, dude. Thanks for having me.

What Is Adrenaline Interactive?

Pete Martin 1:04

Yeah. Uh oh, uh also for people that don't know, uh, they might not know what Adrenaline Interactive is. Would you mind uh just sharing a little bit on your company and what it is that you guys do?

Max Albert 1:14

Yeah, we leverage AI to help advertisers reskin video games to their brand.

Pete Martin 1:19

Uh and can you explain that uh to a five-year-old?

Max Albert 1:24

Absolutely. So brands uh more and more are interested in partnering with video games to create these authentic experiences to reach and impress Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Um, and so our company has software that helps automate that process.

Pete Martin 1:40

Yeah, so if you're a five-year-old and you want better ads in your video games, Max is the guy that's gonna do it.

Max Albert 1:45

We should have to be very careful. And I want to say, time out. There's these regulations called COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), which Adrenaline Interactive of takes very seriously.

Pete Martin 1:52

With 14-year-old then.

Max Albert 1:54

Yes, in the US and 17 in Europe.

Pete Martin 1:56

All right. If you're a five-year-old, don't worry. Nothing happened. If you're a 14-year-old and you're looking for better ads in your video games, actually, it's really cool. Uh, would you explain just like a little bit more what the end product like looks like? If you're if you're actually playing, uh, maybe give an example of of one of these games. What does it look like if you're if you're in there and you're actively like using it? Do you see it? Like how do you how do you experience this thing?

Max Albert 2:19

Yeah, I mean, honestly, most gamers may not know it's even an ad that they're looking at. Um, you could just walk around the Fortnite world that you're playing and see a FIFA soccer ball lying there. Um and that FIFA soccer ball is actually the ad unit on our network reporting back IV standard metrics. But uh yeah, it's just endemic to the scene.

Pete Martin 2:40

Yeah, and so the the benefit for gamers uh who might not like seeing ads uh in in games, like the pop-up ads that are really uh intrusive and kind of interrupt your experience, like this doesn't do that. It's actually kind of fun, right? Like don't uh you have partnerships with with great uh companies around uh around the country, right?

From Game Studio to Ad Tech Startup

Max Albert 2:59

Absolutely, yeah. It's it's all about making it feel authentic to the scene, making it an additive to the experience. I actually started this business, Pete, because I'm a huge gamer myself and I was very annoyed at the disruption of most ads and uh you know how it took me out of my immersive experience. So I just wanted to create better ads.

Pete Martin 3:17

Yeah, that was um you stole my next question. So we'll go. All right, so you're you're a gamer yourself. You kind of grew up in the space. This is like something that you dealt with personally. Uh, did you have experience in the advertising side? Or what was your what was your background prior to getting into this?

Max Albert 3:32

Yeah, I fell into this totally by accident. I actually had a game studio here at Ann Arbor, Michigan, um, called App Stop. And our first game was an NFL game that uh did pretty well. It was the first top 10 mobile game made in Michigan. And um, I know, pretty high. You can do it here in Michigan, I'm telling you. Um yeah, it was an awesome experience, and my players love the game. And the we got to a point where the feedback constantly was, Max, I love the game, but the ads are just terrible. We had these what uh we call in the industry interstitial ads. Um they're interruptive in nature. They just take the player out of the experience and play like a 30-second video like you'd see on YouTube. Um and so there's nothing that I can really do to solve that, you know, as as the game director, other than start a new company that helps advertisers insert better ads into my product. So that's why we're here.

Pete Martin 4:28

All right. So you're you're now inserting FIFA soccer balls potentially into games. Do you have any other examples of what you're doing in real life right now uh to help improve the advertising experience in video games?

Max Albert 4:42

Yeah, we have a lot of soap companies on the platform right now. Yeah, I know you've heard this joke joke before, Pete, but the the running joke is that we're helping gamers discover soap for the first time.

Pete Martin 4:51

Um yeah, as as a uh uh recovering gamer, still active gamer, but like, you know, uh adult now, wiser, older and wiser. Uh I understand that reference and I appreciate it. Thank you.

Max Albert 5:05

Absolutely. Yeah. We uh we um have a lot of soap products that are just like placed inside of a game. You can think of it almost like movie product placement, but for gaming, right? Um they're just soap bottles. And the the cool thing about our ads, though, is that they're interactive in nature. So, like for instance, Ball Boys was an awesome campaign. Ball Boys soap uh is dedicated to help clearing the acne off of middle schooler and high school athletes. And we wanted to teach gamers about the benefits of that. So we put them in half a dozen Fortnite islands, um, and players could pick up the soap, um, clear off their acne on their Fortnite character, and they got a speed boost as a result. So it's really this gamification of education moment.

Pete Martin 5:47

I love it. Uh, and for, I mean, there's lots of people that that watch this podcast. If you're not familiar, Fortnite uh is one of the most popular video games on the planet right now. Absolutely incredible that you guys are able to work with them.

Max Albert 5:59

Yeah. I mean, it's been a blast for us. Uh they're the largest section of our ad network. So our ad network, I should mention, like currently reaches 44 billion gamers daily across Roblox, Fortnite, Discord, MediQuest VR, mobile games. I know super crazy. Fast, you know, in a year and a half that we're able to get all that inventory on the platform. But um Fortnite represents the largest portion of our ad network. It's about 44%.

Pete Martin 6:23

Why do you think you've been able to grow so fast in such a short amount of time?

Scaling the Ad Network

Max Albert 6:27

Really, we started thinking about the game studios. Uh, I think most ad networks in the space start thinking about the advertisers. And um then they develop these ad networks that take so long for the game studios to onboard to. And that's expensive. You know, these game studios really depend on ad revenue. So if your ad network is super difficult, um it's not gonna work. We can onboard game studios in as fast as 15 minutes. We actually onboarded the FIFA. FIFA has a game coming out during the World Cup, and we're able to onboard it literally within one video call within 15 minutes. Um and that ease uh really helps the studios um feel confident testing the product and then eventually, you know, making it their main thing.

Pete Martin 7:14

FIFA's launching a game uh and it'll have your advertising technology in it in June for the World Cup. Yep. I think like maybe I think maybe that's massive news. Like that feels like a really big deal.

Max Albert 7:26

Oh yeah, it's pretty massive. I mean, I I couldn't believe that we got that over the line, to be honest with you.

Pete Martin 7:32

Uh well, congrats. I feel like I didn't know that. That's really, really cool.

Max Albert 7:35

Yeah, thank you. It's been a blast because there's been so much uh interest in leveraging our technology to help place uh products into that game. I can't disclose anything yet, but I'll just say, like, in terms of I I've been in the in-game advertising space now for years, and I've never seen a video game with so much interest from advertisers uh due to this cultural moment that is the World Cup.

Why Gaming Is the Next Major Ad Channel

Pete Martin 7:59

Of course. Uh and can we so you mentioned you started with the game studios in mind to make it easy for them, and I think that's brilliant. Um, but there's also the the advertiser side to this as well. Uh what's the problem that they've been facing? Why are they interested in this? Like what's what's going on in their minds?

Max Albert 8:15

Yeah, totally. So this is kind of a recent cultural change. Um so, you know, even by 2005, gaming was already the largest entertainment industry on planet Earth, bigger than movies and music combined, including merchandising. And um you'd think that advertisers would want to explore that opportunity more, but really advertisers at that moment felt pretty confident reaching everybody they needed to reach on other channels with really good advertising technology like social media and television. What has changed in the past like 10 years is Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which plays more video games in their free time than any other activity, including social media by quite a wide margin. So if you want to be relevant with the next generation of consumers, you have to develop out better uh distribution channels into gaming now.

Solving Attribution and Measurement

Pete Martin 9:02

Okay. Uh and there wasn't, they couldn't do that before.

Max Albert 9:06

There is a plethora of hard problems. Okay. It's giving me a ton of gray hair. Probably the one that we're thinking about most these days is attribution and measurement. Um, just to give you some idea, Pete. Like when I had my popular NFL game, I got a lot of brand deals myself and I plan custom levels for like Maxis Tire, for instance. And at the end of the campaign, I was only able to report back to Maxis Tire what we call in the industry vanity metrics, which is metrics that are cool, but the brand doesn't really care about all that much. Like how many players played the experience and how do they rate the experience on a scale from one to five. That might sound cool, but if you're Maxis Tire, you're like, neither of those metrics moves my business forward. What I really care about is like how many people bought the product, right? Uh we finally just signed a partnership with Atane, uh, which allows us to measure incremental sales. So now for the first time in like gaming history, when we place Maxis Tire into a video game, we can report back how many real people in real life bought that product within the next two weeks and report back that sales data that Max is tire so they feel comfortable investing more money and reinvesting in the gaming experience.

Pete Martin 10:15

Huge. And that was something that you just couldn't do before.

Max Albert 10:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Martin 10:19

Man. Okay. Good technology if you're in the advertising business, that Adrenaline Interactive could be helpful to you. Can you um you shared this with me yesterday and now I have to I just have to get it on record. Can you can you tell me about your uh sales meetings that you have with your customers and what that looks like?

Max Albert 10:39

Oh, yeah, totally. A lot of our sales meetings we have within video games. For instance, like the Nike gaming team, they're big Apex Legends fans. So like I'll hop on a call, meet my sales team with the Nike team, and we'll play Apex together. Um it's kind of like the new golf in a way. You know, you kind of talk about some stuff, you have fun. Yeah.

Pete Martin 10:59

I have um a friend of mine uh that he and I were talking about the fact that he's a he's a like sales rep, like a um SDR BDR. And three years ago, we were talking about how this was coming, how people were going to be spending more time on sales calls in video games because this generation is coming up, and like that makes sense because it's you're right, it's like the new golf. I love that you're actually doing it and that it's actually working. I think that's I think that's the coolest thing. All right, so let's think ahead. Your product is wildly successful. Uh it's everywhere, everybody's using it. What does that mean? Right? What's the what's the impact on the world when that happens?

The Future of Gaming and Advertising

Max Albert 11:38

Oh, I mean, uh I'll I'll say this. I mean, this might sound like crazy, but like in my opinion, I'm I'm such a big like gamer and I I'm big in the community and I'm a big fan. And I really think that the biggest challenge facing game designers today is they can't unlock the financing needed to develop games. Uh, we all know that advertising dollars engenders media. So like we wouldn't have like the Super Bowl, it wouldn't be as big as a spectacle as it is without ad the ad dollars that support it, or the World Cup, or anything else. Um so really like developing out pipelines that allow advertisers to feel more comfortable investing the amount of money they want to invest in gaming is only gonna allow us to enjoy like a golden era of new content.

Pete Martin 12:23

Um more games, better games, higher quality, with all without being intrusive. I love it. Exactly. Super cool.

Max Albert 12:31

And I really think that like gaming and advertisers have had an adverse relationship for the past 30 years because like so many of the ads have been so terrible. But like I should tell gamers like just this is the total truth. Advertisers do not want to like interrupt your experience or make it terrible. Like they're actually a lot more in line with your goals than you think. Like they want to impress you, you know. So if the ad sucks, like it's not gonna be good.

MSU Research Foundation Support

Pete Martin 12:57

Yep, yep. Uh I agree completely. All right. How um how has the role of so we're here on the MSU Research Foundation podcast, right? And what have we done in your history as you've been building uh Adrenaline Interactive?

Max Albert 13:11

Yeah, um, the MSU Research Foundation has been a like godsend. This is honestly.

Pete Martin 13:17

He's not being paid for this, but we are putting him on the podcast. So like take everything Max says with a grain of salt.

Max Albert 13:22

You don't have to take anything that I'm about to say with a grain of salt, honestly, because I'm just gonna tell the truth. Like, well, I have been entrepreneurial all my life, but I've never run a venture-backed business with the stakes that I'm dealing with now. Um, so like Pete, for instance, has been a great advisor to me, helping me navigate difficult challenges. I will tell him, like, hey, I'm facing this path in the road. Should I go down road A or B? And Pete's always there to help me think about the model for how to think about these decisions. So um, I think that just the advice and the strategy has been incredibly helpful and also getting me connected to um other portfolio companies. Like I've had some really great conversations with Protein Pines, for instance, and they could, they haven't done anything yet with our platform yet, but they provided really great feedback on the product, which has been valuable.

Pete Martin 14:08

Love it. Love it. We're not gonna talk more about the MSU Research Foundation because it's self-serving, but it is awesome to know that we've been helpful on your journey, and that is the goal. We want to be for everybody that we're investing in, we just want to be as much as possible moving the needle for you, opening doors for you, and just we know you're gonna run through them. We just want to make those connections so that you can do the things that you do really well.

Max Albert 14:29

Yeah. Um I should mention that MSU is like a top five gaming college. Like if you want to study game design or game programming or game art, like you got to go to MSU. It's phenomenal.

Pete Martin 14:39

Yeah, yeah. And your hire is when you were building Avstop, they were coming out of MSU. Yeah. Yeah. Anywhere in the country, and they were coming out of MSU.

Becoming a PitchMI Finalist

Max Albert 14:47

Yeah. And then I'd go to like conferences in San Francisco and you know, Paris for gaming, and they'd ask me, like, where do you get your artists? And I'm like, I'm not telling you. This is my super secret. Now they know. They should know. They should know. I mean, hire MSU artists, they're phenomenal. They're really good.

Pete Martin 15:08

So good. So good. All right. You are with Adrenaline Interactive. You're one of the four finalists for Pitch MI. We have the championship coming up on April 7th in Lansing. What has that experience been like so far? Talk about like the very beginning. You just found out about this thing. Where were you? Do you remember where you were when you found out about the championship when applications were open?

Max Albert 15:31

That's a good question. I think it was you and Tommy and Vikrom that like texted me. Oh fair, yeah. We reached out to a lot of people. And you were like, we're gonna recommend you, Max. Do you think that you'd be a great fit for this? Um, which I was thrilled about. I love, love, love doing pitch competitions. I think it's a great way to strengthen my pitch and a great way to network with venture capitalists that could be a potential investor. Um, so yeah, I was just absolutely excited and honored that I'd be nominated for this.

Winning the Ann Arbor Regional

Pete Martin 16:02

Oh, I love it. Okay. And then you had you pitched in Ann Arbor. Yeah. You had, it was a very strong uh uh competitive scene. We had more folks apply for the pitch competition in Ann Arbor than any other region because it was AI and there's so many folks that are that are that are focused on AI now. Um so you had lots of strong competitors. Uh, how did you feel when you won the not $250,000 but $375,000 from the MSU Research Foundation, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, and also eLab jumping in with an extra $125K?

Max Albert 16:34

Yeah, I mean, uh it was just like I I could cry, but just the support was like so amazing and needed. Like, as you know, like when you're building a venture-backed business, um, there's so many great ways to apply capital uh that you just simply can't do. You don't have all the resources in the world, right? So um in our instance, there's like this woman named Diti Rami, who's the former head of partnerships at an in-game advertising startup called Anzu, who uh wanted to join our team. Um she loved the product that we were building. We weren't, we didn't have the capital to hire her. And then after winning, we, you know, suddenly did, which has been amazingly helpful at getting more advertisers to adopt this product. Um so yeah, I mean, I just I feel so supported. And I'll say this too like the AI category at Ann Arbor was packed with competition. So I did not at all like expect to win. I thought that it was gonna be a tough, tough fight. And there were a lot of companies that had more revenue than we did, and um they're they were all building incredible products. So I I just felt really grateful that we were able to pull out the W.

Pete Martin 17:42

It was uh, and we that we felt that in all four of the cities that we went to. It was so cool to see the uh the variety of competition, right? Uh, because it's focused on all these different industry themes, these core competitive strengths that Michigan has. And so tons in AI, tons in mobility, advanced manufacturing, defense in in Detroit, lots of the the uh what we had up in Traverse City, which was so cool because those four founders took over, five founders took over the news station for like the entire morning the the day before, which is so cool. Uh, and they all they all presented extremely well. They were all building incredible businesses. Uh, and that's like that's what we get to showcase by having a competition like this is that there are, you know, there are four finalists for this championship in April. There are so many great companies being being built in Michigan. So I just um yeah, appreciate everybody for for being a part of that.

Max Albert 18:32

Um and I should mention too, by the way, like I know for a fact that two of the competitors at the Ann Arbor location uh got intro to VCs at that event and got investment directly afterwards. So to be honest, I feel like everybody came out of that ahead.

Pete Martin 18:49

We well, that was that was the bet. It's like the bet that we're taking with Pitch MI is by doing this and having a large event like that. You talk about like uh advertising is engendered in media and like better things happen because of advertising. And because the MEDC put funding behind this, put enough funding behind this event for us to not just have a pitch competition with a large prize, but also uh put a lot of marketing behind it. We get we get more attention on this thing, which means more VCs get involved, more corporates get involved, and we can we can make these connections and some of them happen naturally because of those events and beyond. Yeah, you're totally right. You're totally right. Just by just by participating, it's been beneficial to to a lot of people, which is the dream. It's exactly what we wanted.

Max Albert 19:29

Yeah, absolutely. I actually think that like founders getting connected to VCs, the like way it happens is so critical. I know this sounds like kind of weird, but like um tell me if this resonates at all with you, Pete. Like I just feel like sometimes it can feel very forced, like whether a VC, like a scout is reaching out to a founder and there's not a lot of passion in what we're doing there. Or sometimes founders really need the capital. So they're like scrambling to reach out to VCs. If it's done like through a warm intro, you know, uh that that can really make the conversation a lot more authentic and of pitch competitions as well, is like a just a phenomenal way for VCs and founders to get connected. Because so much of this is a relationship, you know, you're building a business together and it's gonna take, you know, years. Um, so developing that authenticity like through a pitch competition is always great.

Pete Martin 20:20

Yeah, I agree, agree completely. Uh when you can get people, even if you just get them physically in the room together, right? That's it. Right. Like, because then natural networking occurs, people do get kind of uh get introduced to each other, get connected with each other, and by physically seeing somebody, you can just build a stronger relationship. Yes, that's why we're yes, yes, yes, yes, totally agree. All right, so we have um, gosh, we are or we're in the winter of 2026 at the time of recording this. We got a couple months until the championship. It's only 27 degrees outside. Is it 27? That's warm. It didn't feel like that on the way in. Um what has the so you won in October or in late September, early October. Uh, what has the the preparation been like? Like what's happened since uh since winning, since getting the investment? You mentioned the higher that you've been able to make, which isn't that's incredible. We love that. Um, what about like recently? What have you been doing? Uh, what what what's the support been like as you're preparing for the championship on the seventh?

Max Albert 21:19

Yeah, I mean, it's all like pedal on the metal, go, go, go. I mean, it always has been, but particularly in this moment, we're trying to show as much momentum as possible between winning regionals and getting to the finals. Um, I always think about the business as like three pillars. You have the advertisers, we have the studios, we have the product. The studio side went from reaching 3.5 million gamers daily on the platform to that 44 million number. So 3.5 to 44 million. Quite a big jump in the past six months. Uh on the product side, I'd say I mentioned this early in the podcast, but that attain partnership to measure incremental sales has been the biggest win. I mean, that's been a deal we've been working on for. Literally the beginning of the business. So to get that over the line now is incredible. On the advertiser side, uh signing up more pilots, we just got a huge deal for them, Sargento Cheese. They're gonna spend a quarter of a million on the network. So good. That's exciting. Um the incremental sales like feature was a big part in getting that deal over the line. Like it was a no until we added that, and then boom, it's a yes. And we think that's gonna be very indicative to for the future as well.

Pete Martin 22:27

And the incremental sales is your ability to say, hey, a gamer was playing this game, saw your product, and then within 30 minutes, an hour, a day, whatever, they went and bought your product.

Max Albert 22:38

It's actually so cool, Pete. If you don't if you don't want me if you don't mind me deeping out, uh incremental sales is the idea of net new sales. So we're only reporting back the sales data to Sargento Cheese of people that specifically bought the product because they saw the ad in Fortnite. So there are like people that saw the ad in Fortnite that would have already bought the product regardless. So we don't count those people. Um, we only count the people that like our net new sales.

Pete Martin 23:09

Oh, so the contribution here is hey, they saw this and this directly turned into revenue for your company. That's that's really powerful.

Max Albert 23:16

And it could happen an hour later or it could happen two weeks later, you know. Um, it doesn't really matter to us. Wow. Or Sargento.

Pete Martin 23:23

Wow. Okay. Well I love that partnership. That's very, that's very, very, very cool. That's very powerful. Uh okay. Uh what about the support that you're getting around the state of Michigan? Uh, how have your customer conversations been going, your investor conversations since winning Pitch MI in the fall?

Max Albert 23:39

Yeah, I mean, I'll start with the customer side. You know, I think that customers have always been really enamored by our product vision and really excited about where it's becoming. And they always give us a ton of features that are that they want before they buy, and then they're super hard to solve, and we have to prioritize and figure out what is the most immediate demand first. But um, you know, I think that customers have been going really great from an investor perspective. Immediately after winning regionals, we had a bunch of funds reach out and say, when are you opening up your seed round? Uh would love to stay in touch. Um, you know, TL;DR, we are opening up our seed round here in a couple in like a month. So like I it's really exciting that we have so much support. We have a ton of interest. So I think it's actually gonna be a pretty easy uh raise, knock on wood.

Pete Martin 24:27

Okay. Um and then we have been doing some fun stuff with uh with Pitch MI as well. Um, just got done. We just wrapped up a couple of fun days without uh we're gonna give you guys a teaser because I think when this podcast episode airs, we won't have uh released all of this content yet. But can you just explain some of your favorite moments from the last couple of days and what we've been doing?

Max Albert 24:48

Oh my gosh, yeah, it's so fun. Uh we started off the first day doing like an improv workshop. And so, like, one of the things I had to do was pitch my business, but pretend I was in a blizzard while I was pitching. So, like shivering and the judges was like shouting at me like, I can't hear you, and I'm screaming like, we reach 44 million gamers daily. Um, so I I think like the benefit of doing that as silly as it sounds is that it just gets you like in a place where you can think more creatively and you don't have to be so rigid in your pitch. I think like by the time April 7th rolls around, I'm gonna be a lot looser now.

Pete Martin 25:23

Yeah, totally agree. Cannot wait for everybody to see that content because when we put I just think it's gonna be really popular and and also really fun and entertaining, but also is value valuable for you guys. Actually, I do believe that when you get on stage, you're gonna be more comfortable uh for many reasons for for the the work that we're doing the last couple of days. So fun. And we've got more stuff uh lined up with you guys that is yet to come. Um, but I'm excited to do that with you too.

Max Albert 25:49

Yeah, that's gonna be a blast. Uh we got styled too. You did. You did. They brought in a fashion stylist from Detroit named Arturo, who's you know, very well known here in Detroit because he buys like from local boutiques and stuff.

Pete Martin 26:02

He's known all all across Michigan. He's actually based at the Grand Rapids, he's just known all over the place.

Max Albert 26:07

All over the place, yeah. He's he's awesome. U immediately when I walked into the styling room, um, I complimented his shoes because they were super badass. And he was like, Oh yeah, they're from Paris. And I was like, Oh, he knows what he's talking about.

Pete Martin 26:26

I love it. Um okay, so we've got tons of stuff coming up. Uh so keep your eyes on uh on Max and on Pitch MI, and uh, we will continue to release really fun content between now and April. Um so a couple kind of wrap-up, a handful of wrap-up questions for you. Uh, if you had you know, thinking about your journey so far uh in the multiple companies that you've now started, what advice would you have for a founder that's here in Michigan that's thinking about giving it a go?

Max Albert 26:56

Oh my gosh. I mean my advice would be to follow your passion. I know it's like corny, and a lot of people say don't do that, but I I've just always followed what I'm interested in, like aggressively, and that's led to really, really spectacular things. I think, can I say this? Like, I had the benefit of a software engineering job at Ford Motor Company, uh, which I did uh while I was building my game studio for the first year, and then I only took the leap into like full-time doing the game studio thing when I felt very confident in where the business was at. So I would say like, even if you have a nine to five, um, you don't have to give that up. You can still do entrepreneurship stuff on the side and only take the leap when you feel comfortable.

Pete Martin 27:40

There's data. Um, I gotta surface this data. There's data out there that shows that if like for for founders that do that, that have their nine to five while they're while they're kind of incubating their idea, but they have higher success success rates because they can they can take longer to do this and it's like it's less risk. Uh it's very, that's very cool. Good data on that.

Max Albert 27:59

Um yeah, customer discovery, I think, is the longest part.

Pete Martin 28:03

Yeah.

Max Albert 28:03

Like figuring out what to build is so much harder and takes longer than like actually building it. Yes. Like, yes.

Pete Martin 28:10

Oh, and also when we were building, uh, we didn't do it at all. We didn't, we just we were building because we thought we knew what customers wanted. And that's the uh probably the worst way that you can go about building a business. Talk to your customers as much as you can. Uh uh Elliott Smith at Motmot does this really well. Uh he went off and did a bunch of customer discovery and then started building his products. He's like, Yeah, okay, here's here's what we're doing. Uh, brilliant, right? Like, do that. You'll save yourself so much time, so much money, so much effort, so much stress. Uh, yeah, can't recommend that enough. Yeah. Uh okay, one more. Um what advice for someone? So we're gonna do Pitch MI again. We have the championships in April, and then we're gonna do Pitch MI again. I won't I won't reveal the dates yet. Um, but for someone that might be uh interested in applying, do you have any advice for them?

Max Albert 28:57

Um I mean, I would say that if like definitely, so first of all, like I think that a lot of founders are pretty scared about doing public pitch competitions, like even founders that are building really great businesses because they're worried about being vulnerable on stage, like, oh, my business is imperfect for reasons X, Y, and Z. So how are the judges gonna react? You can't worry about that. Like every business is imperfect, you know. You you just gotta get up there and and uh I don't know, be honest and do your best. Um and I think that it's really rewarding to do these pitch competitions. So I would say apply early, apply often. The other thing that I'd say too is um even if you don't get it, like it's better to apply and keep applying. Like a year goes by faster than you think. And um, there's been a lot of times where like I didn't get the opportunity to pitch one year, I applied the next year, I got it. And then I was so much better positioned to win because my business was now a year more mature. So just do it.

Pete Martin 29:59

But agreed. And from you know, from gosh, from my perspective, we saw it was about 400 people that applied for Pitch MI this this past uh summer, fall. Uh now we know who they are, right? We have a list of those folks, and we've been able to share, like, hey, you you all should be talking to these people, make sure you're aware of them, et cetera. So just that, just by applying, uh, and we did send a list of resources to everybody that applied and everything like that, just by applying, you get on the radar of folks that you should be on the radar of, like that's really helpful. Uh so I would I would do that for sure. Uh okay.

Max Albert 30:30

That's how that's that's a great like piece of advice with everything about building businesses, right? It's like it's so much better to just apply, like even if it's bad timing, even if it's like you know imperfect, because you get on people's radar and then you build these relationships, and like, you know, eventually the time of the timing will be right.

Closing Remarks

Pete Martin 30:48

Yeah.

Max Albert 30:48

Yeah.

Pete Martin 30:48

All right. We're uh it's a Saturday, right? So today is a Saturday. I don't know about when you guys are listening to this, but today it's a Saturday. Uh, and we're in Ann Arbor, and I brought my family in. You got to meet my wife and kids, and so my kids have two questions for you. Here we go. Uh my daughter Molly wants to know what is your absolute favorite video game?

Max Albert 31:10

Probably Hearst Dunn, because that's where I won a championship for the Michigan University of Michigan. I didn't know you won. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's incredible. Um undefeated season. My foam out. That's so good. Yeah, it was pretty awesome. Oh, yeah, you must be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What it was funny because I I I started playing esports sophomore year, and it was it was awesome the progression because sophomore year we had a really mediocre season, junior year we had like a competitive season, but like didn't go that far. And then senior year, we like wiped the floor with everybody, and like it was really awesome. Like, I learned a ton. Uh, that season was very data driven. Like, I used Python scripts that scanned my opponent's matches before the game. So, like my scouting reports on people were sometimes like 40 pages thick, and um, yeah, I knew everything that was gonna happen in a match before I went in.

Pete Martin 31:59

Oh, oh, I didn't know it got the deep. That's so cool. That's super cool. All right, great, good. I will deliver that feedback to that answer to Molly. Max wants to know uh, do you like cars? And also, if you do like cars, what's your favorite car? That's a good question.

Max Albert 32:17

I, you know, I worked at Ford Motor Company, so I'm very partial to Ford's. I think I got I gotta go with the GT40.

Pete Martin 32:24

Okay. I love it. Okay. Uh all right, last question. Uh, for the folks that are listening, where can they go to learn more about you and Adrenaline Interactive? How can I get in touch with you?

Max Albert 32:35

Absolutely. Go to our website, adrenalineinteractive.ai, um, and there's a contact form there. Okay.

Pete Martin 32:42

Max, thank you. Really appreciate you being on the show. Also, thank you to uh Ryan Morrison for allowing us to record in his studio today. Really thank you, Ryan. And thanks to the folks at Bamboo for having the space for us to be here today.

Max Albert 32:54

Yes, and thank you so much, Pete, for the interview. It's a great conversation. And thanks to the MSU Research Foundation for you guys. And the best are better partners of the building. Our pleasure.