Building Gaming's First AI-Powered Publisher

In this episode of The Future of Marketing, host Andres Figueira interviews Joshua Cabrera, Marketing Director at Hakuro.io, a new game publisher building a proprietary AI-powered engine that analyzes gaming sentiment across Reddit, Discord, TikTok, Twitch, YouTube, and other platforms. By scraping and correlating community data, Hakuro provides developers with actionable insights directly from gamers—informing both game design decisions and go-to-market strategies. Currently emerging from stealth mode and seeking their first published title, Hakuro is taking a contrarian position in a post-COVID gaming market still facing widespread layoffs and reduced investment, actively funding indie developers while larger studios pull back. Topics Discussed: Building a B2B platform go-to-market strategy during industry contraction Using AI for sentiment analysis and data correlation across gaming communities The failure modes of marketing automation in creative B2B markets Conference-led distribution strategy for early-stage technical products Structuring qualifiers and KPIs to filter partnership opportunities Navigating global developer outreach with a seven-person remote team Maintaining capital-efficient growth with aggressive ROAS targets