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Derek Wong
Chief Product Officer @ Reforged Labs | Gaming x AI Marketing | ex-Microsoft, Riot, LinkedIn
Derek Wong is the Chief Product Officer at Reforged Labs, a GenAI platform for game marketers to create video ads.14 He joined Reforged Labs, which was part of Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch, in this role recently.4
Derek has over a decade of experience in product, marketing, and entrepreneurship.2 His career highlights include:
Professional Experience
- ONE Esports: Served as Senior Product Manager and later Director of Product Management from April 2021 to June 2023.2
- LinkedIn: Worked as a Product Marketing Manager in San Francisco from June 2018 to August 2019.2
- Riot Games: Held the position of Associate Brand Manager for League of Legends from February 2016 to April 2018.2
- Microsoft: Worked as a Product Marketing Manager for Xbox Platform & Devices from August 2013 to January 2016.2
Entrepreneurial Ventures
- The Paper Lantern: Founder and Host of this blog and podcast since September 2019.2
- Antler: Participated as an Entrepreneur in Residence from January to October 2020, co-founding a fintech startup called Moneko.2
Education
Derek holds a BA in Economics from the University of California, Irvine.2
Derek's diverse experience across major tech companies and startups, combined with his background in product management, marketing, and entrepreneurship, likely makes him well-suited for his role as Chief Product Officer at Reforged Labs, a startup focused on AI-powered video creation for game marketing.13
Highlights
I'm SUPER excited to share that I'll be joining Reforged Labs (YC W22) as Chief Product Officer.
Artificial Intelligence. Video games. Marketing. Product. Startups. There's no better time than now to combine all my passions and experiences together for this grand adventure.
No 🧢 - I wear a lot of different hats and look forward to bringing multi-faceted expertise to this fast-moving startup.
Reforged Labs is building a GenAI workspace designed for game marketers. Our platform helps studios create campaign-ready, self-improving video ads in minutes with our creative and analytics AI - so you can be your own designer, editor, and performance marketer, all on one platform.
The game industry is evolving and we're excited to help bring innovation and new solutions to support game studios so they can focus on building genre-defining experiences.
It's not just about the trends and opportunity - it's about the team. I've known Co-founder/CEO Robert Huynh 🔜 Gamescom/Devcom for more than a decade - he's one of the brightest, most hardworking, and driven people that I've ever met. I'm excited to squad up and work closely with Co-Founder/CTO Oscar Xing Luo to create amazing AI products while forging an amazing company culture. I'm thrilled to join an early-stage startup and learn from a stacked team of world-class operators and leaders in Carol Lu-Vernooij and Lee Wang
Follow our journey! If you're attending Gamescom or work for a game studio of any size and want to learn more about we're building - drop me a DM and I'd love to find a time to learn more about your game :D
I wanted to share that after 3 years at ONE Esports I'll be moving on to my next play!
I joined as a first-time product manager and leave as a seasoned product leader who built products, developed people, and reinforced a culture of data-driven experimentation during my tenure.
This was a role of many firsts. I made the jump from a career in marketing to become a first-time product manager. This was my first time working overseas as well as my first time working at a company based outside of the West Coast. I got elbows-deep in the theory and practice of product development - everything from strategy to system architecture, to backlog grooming and bug fixing.
Some of my highlights from my journey at ONE include:
- Building our flagship ONE Esports mobile app from "zero to one" and scaling it to our fans worldwidr
- Growing our global website portfolio and scaling up our programmatic advertising operations
- Embracing a hybrid-remote workstyle and collaborating with Engineering and Country leads across India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and beyond.
Thank you in particular to Carlos Alimurung for this opportunity. You encouraged me to evolve my mindset from just a product manager to see opportunities and obstacles from the perspectives of a general manager and business leader. You engaged me with spirited debates about the intersection of technology trends and business strategy, while challenging me to embrace a rigorous data-driven mindset and analytical aptitude with your signature New York swagger.
To the rest of my ONE and ONE Esports colleagues: Prashant dubey Ankur Omer Duc Le Ameya Sawant Nikhil Birla James Lu Trent Davis Valentina Mosca Jason Khoo Amanda "Tania Mae" Tan Ethan Chew Joseph Sim Ahmad Ichsan this is farewell but not goodbye. Will tune in to all future events and support from afar!
