Max Albert

My name is Max Albert. I'm the CEO of adrenaline interactive. We leverage AI to help advertisers reskin video games to their brand. I started the company 18 months ago.

My story starts in March of 2022. I quit my nine-to-five job at Ford Motor Company to start a game studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We had a really popular NFL game and a popular racing game. Brands wanted to insert themselves into the game in authentic ways, and over time I made software to make it easier. Eventually I was like, hey, I should just make a company that just does this.

We really like working with automotive, CPG, and retail companies — companies that are really into the gaming scene and want to make sure they leave an imprint on this community that I love.

We were AI-enabled right from the start, and we knew AI was going to be a huge part of our business. I don't actually think that virtual product placement in video games is possible without AI.

There's so many layers to it. I mean, just generating the product that's inserted into the video game — that's enhanced by AI. But also the matchmaking piece, helping advertisers find the right game to meet their objectives. That's all facilitated by AI now.

Yeah, totally. We worked with Dr. Squatch soap and Sydney Sweeney to insert her new soap line into the video game. It's just endemic in the scene. So if you played Fortnite, you might see Dr. Squatch soap kind of laying around the battlefield.

The running joke is that we're actually in the social impact space, helping gamers find soap for the first time.

Totally. I think a lot of people in the industry feel like advertisers and gamers have this adversarial relationship, because for the past 30 years advertisers have served these interruptive ads known as interstitials that have really harmed the player's experience. But actually, advertisers are constantly trying to finance the games that we love so much and serve ads that are impressive and content within themselves. So really it's all about making it possible to align those goals. Everything that adrenaline is about is technology that makes the ad experience super authentic.

It's almost weird to not have the ad there, actually.

Absolutely. The example everyone always uses is, in a sports game — if you're playing FIFA soccer and you see the billboards on the side of the stadium, if those billboards weren't there it would almost be weird. That's kind of the level we're trying to facilitate with all the product placements we do inside our games. For some brands it just doesn't make sense stylistically — it would take people out of the immersion. But adrenaline is all about finding those immersive opportunities.

Yeah, I use Claude Code all the time. I'm a big fan of Claude. He feels like my best friend at times.

Yeah, we're doing that.

We're really excited to be partnering with FIFA Heroes. It's the new FIFA game coming out during the World Cup, and we're facilitating some branded placements inside that game. The game studio making it is called Enver, and the CEO of that company, Kyle, is a good friend of mine. He's always in search of ads and revenue growth that don't harm the player experience, so it was really an effortless alignment.

The goals for my company are really just to integrate into more games and facilitate more ad placements — and make them more effective too. We're constantly trying to bring new products to the table that make it easier for advertisers, game developers, and gamers to have a great experience.

Oh man, if I could place products into one video game — this is actually kind of a surprising answer, but I would say Candy Crush, for sure. Candy Crush, people may not know this, but it's 82% women between the ages of 34 to 56, and 31% of those gamers have household incomes of a hundred thousand dollars or more. They're shopping for the whole family, so it's a really great fit for beauty brands. We're seeing a lot of beauty brands in my network want to get into gaming, and that property in particular would be a spectacular fit. So crossing my fingers one day we can get some beauty products in there.

Yeah, I'm a gamer first. My co-founder Walt is the former director of programmatic advertising at Nike, so he's kind of the advertising brain — but I'm always the gamer of the group. I started my gaming love when I was 14 years old at my local library at a Mario Kart tournament. The grand prize was a hundred-dollar gift card to GameStop. I won every month for like three years. I never felt richer than being 14 years old with a hundred-dollar gift card at GameStop, because I could buy the top-tier game with the deluxe package. I felt like Elon Musk whenever I won. So I'm really big into gaming, and I learned how to program games — I was super young too, I programmed my first game when I was 16 years old.

I just love it, and it's such a special community. Contrary to popular belief, I think a lot of people think of gaming as lonely, but actually it's such a big community, and some of my best friends all come from my gaming background.

I think I can pick up on something there, because the really interesting part about how gaming has evolved is — it's not just the hardcore stuff anymore. Obviously there's still Hearthstone and Call of Duty and Marathon and Arc, and that's awesome, I love all those titles. But what I'm really fascinated by is the growth of like Wordle, the LinkedIn games, chess, and all these other things. Candy Crush is a great example. There's a lot more people gaming constantly than you'd ever expect. Another myth I'd love to debunk in this interview: there are more women playing games in the US today than men in the US. So it's really everybody. It's a phenomenon.

Exactly. If you're playing bridge or Wordle with your friends and family — a lot of people have an adversarial relationship with the label "gamer," they don't want to be called a gamer. But the truth is everybody's gaming all the time.

When I'm hiring a candidate, the first thing I look for is really past experience — have they done this job before, and have they done it at a high level? I know this sounds maybe weird, but I also look for asymmetric people — like diamonds in the rough. Maybe people who've been overlooked in the past, and someone I can help succeed in the right format.

I believe culture is the only competitive advantage you really have as a very, very young startup. You don't have a real technical advantage, at least not in the very beginning. It's all about — is your team having fun? Can they execute? Are they working hard together? And can they show up to work every day solving really hard problems with a smile?

Yeah, in 2026 hiring has become a lot more difficult. You have a lot of candidates and they all seem pretty good. But how do you separate the pretty goods from the really truly game-changers that are going to make this business a success? Validating that is very difficult.

When I'm vetting candidates, I'd say AI fluency is almost like table stakes. It's just something you need to have. I wouldn't say it's the extra thing that gets you over the line — but if you don't have AI fluency in 2026, it's going to be a short interview.

I'd tell new founders, when you're hiring, the most important thing is to just not settle. Don't settle. It's really easy, especially very early in the business, to just grab your closest buddy and start running. But if you only hire B players, you're going to never regain that cultural momentum you need in the earliest days of your business.

Dude, you're hitting on a real big sore spot for me. I think one of the biggest personal challenges a CEO has is giving up that control. I've been an entrepreneur for a long time now, but this is my first venture-backed business where I'm not in every meeting. I have a bigger team now than I've ever managed before, a much more complex product that I can't live in every part of. So trusting people to do the job has been a big personal growth point for me, as somebody who's a control freak and wants to do everything myself.

I've been a member of Founders League for one year now. What drew me to Founders League was the pickleball — I just love playing pickleball and being active. I'd say that the Founders League network is five stars. Honestly, everyone here is super friendly, charismatic, and many of them have led to great business opportunities.

Sure. One of the things that's interesting about Founders League is there's a marketing element to it, which is great for my business. There's a lot of CPG founders here, or founders who have started big brands. So getting their advice and talking about my product and how we could grow together in gaming has been really impactful.

One of the most unexpected benefits of joining Founders League is just the importance of camaraderie as I build this business outside of work. It's really good to get out of my adrenaline thinking — which could be 24/7 if I didn't do things like pickleball.

I've been playing pickleball for two years now.

Absolutely. The motivation of Founders League has made me a better pickleball player. I'll never forget my first time playing with the guys — it was just a scrimmage match here at Millbrook, and I think I lost like 3 to 11. One of the guys was like, hey, before League starts you better take some lessons — there's going to be 200 people here and there's going to be high pressure. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got to step up my game here a little bit.

Yeah, I've been practicing. I've been leveling up my game at pickleball, and we actually did quite well in the tournament last season.

Last year we made it to the semis in the beginners league tournament. I think I'm going to stay in the beginners league for now, but my goal is to make the finals.

I think my persona on the court is very social. I love pickleball for that reason — you can talk to people in between points. I kind of match the energy. If you give it to me, I'm going to give it right back. But if we're friends, we can be friendly.

The elevator pitch for Founders League is the following: great friends, great community, and really good pickleball.

Oh my gosh, this is like — how much time do you have? I'd say for upcoming video game releases I'm most excited about, obviously Grand Theft Auto is on everybody's mind. I think it's going to be the biggest game of all time.