About Us
Tales is building the platform where creators can
transform ideas into major franchises
Writers Are Struggling
Traditional books aren’t selling like they used to. Below are the bestsellers in each time period.
One million books are self-published per year but only 40 of those writers are able to generate $1 million over 5 years. The top 0.004% of writers make the same as a mid-level silicon valley engineer?
Visual and interactive mediums are enjoying unstoppable growth. The creators of games own the top-grossing charts. Today, they contain very little storytelling, but that’s about to change.
Storytelling needs to evolve
People still love storytelling (they are human after all), but the format and economics need to change. Tales makes fiction storytelling more compelling through these methods:
Mixed Media
Blurred lines
Interactive
Responsive
Episodic
Engagement over time
Social
Discuss everything
Bite-Sized
Fits into their schedule
Free
Ownership is dead
Our Investors
The Venture Capitalists
Eric Paley
Managing Partner @ Founder Collective
Micah Rosenbloom
Managing Partner @ Founder Collective
David Frankel
Managing Partner @ Founder Collective
The Creators
John Riccitiello
CEO @ Unity
Scott Belsky
Chief Product Officer @ Adobe, Founder @ Behance
Chris Carvalho
Board Member @ Roblox, COO @ Kabam
The Influencers
Jake Paul
Partner @ Anti Fund, YouTube & Instagram Star, Fighter
Geoffrey Woo
Partner @ Anti Fund
The Amplifiers
Elizabeth Yin
General Partner @ Hustle Fund
Sam Parr
Founder @ The Hustle, Hustle Con
Joe Speiser
Founder @ Epic Advertising ($200M), Petflow ($70M), LittleThings ($60M)
Dave Lu
Managing Partner @ Hyphen Capital
The Hollywood Connectors
Patrick Lee
Founder @ Rotten Tomatoes
Baron Davis
NBA All Star, Founder @ Slic
Jason Lin
Managing Director @ Super Capital Group, AUM Group (Nina Yang Bongiovi, Forrest Whitaker)
The Dealmakers
Ed Lu
CFO @ Fandom, Machine Zone, Advisor @ Roblox
Yoshio Osaki
CEO @ IDG (Game research used by all top 10 game publishers)
Lili Wang
CIO @ OneWorld, Director @ Goldman Sachs
Larry Chu
Head of Tech M&A @ Goodwin
The Builders
Yun-Fan Juan
General Partner @ Brighter Capital, Founding Engineer @ FB Ads
Kari Lee
Director of Engineering @ Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Facebook
The Team
We recently raised capital and are hiring! 👉🏼 taleswriter.com/careers
Sam Gutierrez
Art Director
* Electronic Arts
* Bigpoint
* 2K Games
Alex Hall
CTO
* Netflix
* Microsoft
* Berkeley
Thomas Wu
CEO
* Elevation Partners
* Morgan Stanley
* Berkeley
Brooke Wrisley
Content Acquisitions
Shawn Chiao
Technical Lead
* Nuna
* Elation
* Gummicube
I'm the co-founder of Tales and this is my story
I met Amanda in 1991.
I took this photo of her the moment after she revealed she had just been fatally bitten by a medusa and will become one shortly. Before I ended her life, she begged me to take her dying tears to bring her brother back to life. Even though this was over 20 years ago, I remember this moment in Final Fantasy Adventure very clearly.
A decade ago I graduated from Berkeley, ranked 3rd in my engineering class and it occurred to me recently that I have forgotten how to do calculus. Why is it I am able to remember an obscure story from my childhood, but I can’t remember basic math that was the building block for my engineering education?
Humans are fundamentally WIRED for stories.
Before we learned to write in 3200 B.C., we told stories to pass information down through each generation. Those of us who were able to absorb these stories survived and reproduced (the rest were probably consumed by lions). Stories have the ability to TEACH us, INSPIRE us, make us CRY, and make us LAUGH. At this moment in time, empathy is more important than ever. We can only live one life but stories let us visit the lives of others.
Great storytellers are important.
We all know the stereotype of the creative writer. Barista / Uber driver by day, working on scripts by night. Working for years in isolation with no feedback, networking to find agents/influencers, and praying that a publisher will find an audience for them in the rare case they get that one-shot.
If J.K. Rowling can get rejected 13 times by publishing “experts” for Harry Potter, perhaps the distribution system should be rebuilt. Success shouldn’t be dictated by pure luck or who you know. Good stories should rise to the top through talented storytellers… coupled with user data, rapid iteration, modern formats, and effective monetization.
Tales allows writers to rapidly pilot visual, interactive, episodic stories and iterate off feedback/metrics to improve performance. When we succeed we build the next Netflix, powered by individual creators who found an audience by virtue of their talent and hustle, not their proximity to the right gatekeepers.
Thomas Wu
CEO / CO-FOUNDER
