Welcome to Founder Real Talk, a podcast for founders, by founders. We explore the real journey of building and growing a company. Each episode, we go beyond the highlight reel to unpack the strategies, decisions, and hard lessons that shaped successful businesses, revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly behind the growth.
Max Albert is the founder and CEO of Adrenaline Interactive, an AI-powered ad tech startup that places brand and product placements directly inside video games like Fortnite and Roblox. In this conversation, Max walks through how a childhood Mario Kart obsession turned into a career, why "what even counts as an impression" is ad tech's hardest unsolved problem, and how landing a campaign with FIFA Heroes became one of the proudest moments of his company's life. He also gets candid about overworking himself after raising venture capital, the leadership shift from "quarterback" to "coach," and the spiritual book that reshaped how he thinks about building something that actually matters.
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Chapters
(00:00) - Intro
(02:05) - Why the video game industry suddenly needs advertisers
(03:01) - A $100 GameStop prize that made him feel richer than Elon Musk
(05:56) - FIFA Heroes and building an NFL game with an actual Browns receiver
(08:07) - What EA and FIFA's breakup proved about games as the real ad channel
(10:59) - What growing past 20 employees taught him about being heard
(14:44) - "Slowing down to speed up," and why direction beats speed
(17:04) - Ad tech's hardest problem: nobody agrees on what counts as an impression
(20:55) - His current growing edge: prioritizing the right feedback
(23:49) - The Zuckerberg line he lives by, and ditching the 12-hour-day myth
(27:23) - Quarterback, coach, general manager — and "I don't pay you to agree with me"
(33:06) - The book that rewired his idea of a good life
Links & Resources
Keywords
founders, entrepreneurship, ad tech, video game advertising, in-game advertising, product placement, startup leadership, venture capital, founder mental health, gaming industry, AI advertising, brand measurement, EA Sports FC, FIFA, esports, remote teams, startup culture, CEO leadership, work-life balance, founder burnout
