CraftFest
Game Server
CraftFest was a real game changer for Kai, starting his journey in entrepreneurship before high school. What started out as a single-player world on Minecraft in alpha (before the game was released) became a popular multiplayer server with mini-games and ranks players could purchase. It turned in to a lot of income for a ~13 year old, and required Kai to learn everything from coding plugins to marketing and managing a community. Realizing that school was a waste of time, he dropped out before finishing freshman year.
As the server grew, Kai (known as kaimaikai in-game, and later on CraftFestMC) ditched the old single-player world and put together a hub with various game-types players could enjoy. This led to more people joining and more ranks being bought. CraftFest became a community like none other, sparking friendships and opportunities for the future. In fact, many of Kai's current friends and business partners are from the CraftFest days, where they met and played on that very server.
Unfortunately CraftFest met its demise when the host shut down and the files were lost, but the experiences were never forgotten and Kai would take everything he learned from it to the next project, making it bigger and better.
Yeti Crew
Web Design Agency
After developing and designing all the websites for his previous projects, Kai decided it was time to make a company out of his new skills and provide web design services to the gaming community. Yeti Crew was a small team of hard-working people who brought dozens of websites to life. With great reviews and a working referral system, Yeti Crew gained a lot of hype and got a ton of clients who needed websites for their game servers and hosts. After a very successful run, Kai decided it was best to move on to something new, having saved up a lot of money for new projects.
MyMCServers
Game Server Host
Acquired
MyMCServers was the first large-scale company Kai founded. After running various game servers (most notably CraftFest, FlexGaming and VaultCraft) he decided it was time to take it to the next level and start hosting them. His co-founder, Nir Zemer, was a connection from VaultCraft and had a lot of pull in the Israeli gaming scene. Kai handled the development while Nir handled the advertising.
By offering free hosting and other perks to Minecraft YouTubers, MyMCServers was quickly promoted across the industry and had a huge spike in popularity.
Before long, MyMCServers was one of the largest Minecraft server hosting providers in the world with thousands of customers. They secured dozens of partnerships and moved into dedicated servers, website hosting, plugin/map development and server advertising. After only 9 months since launching, MyMCServers was sold to a private buyer and continued on for years after the sale.
DediFire
Game Server Host
Acquired
After the success of MyMCServers, Kai branched out to more forms of hosting and cloud computing and founded DediFire on his own, offering dedicated, web, voice, and game server hosting for 20+ different games. With a foot in the industry already, Kai was able to gain hundreds of clients in countries all around the world. The strong majority of clients were Minecraft servers, with CS:GO and TF2 also making up a decent amount of the customer-base.
In May of 2016, a few members of the DediFire team attended WorldHostingDays (WHD) in Phoenix. After a few investors hopped on board, DediFire was able to get colocation in Chicago and Amsterdam following a deal with Singlehop. This opened the door for new clients in Europe, leading to a partnership with Discord.FM, now known as Amped. It also gave DediFire some of the strongest servers in the industry for game hosting, superior to the other hosting companies who primarily used OVH.
After about a year of DediFire being online, global Minecraft hosting was getting cheaper and more saturated by the day, so Kai sold DediFire to a UK gaming company and moved on. After the sale, DediFire continued on and became a notable game hosting company for CS:GO, and hosted many popular CS:GO tournaments.
Konjure
Decentralized Website Builder
After doing some investing in cryptocurrency in 2017 and selling multiple hosting companies, the decentralized hosting opportunity of the web3 space stuck out to Kai. Konjure was a website builder that deployed the website files on a peer-to-peer network. People could run a node, help host the network by storing and serving encrypted files, and get rewarded with the KONJ token.
Kai had the opportunity of meeting with Charlie Lee, Brock Pierce, Tim and Adam Draper, Juan Benet, Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Brewster Kahle and many more figureheads in the industry. He was also able to travel to various events like Decentralized Web Summit, World Crypto Con, and Digital Currency Con. Konjure was a finalist in many startup accelerators including dLab, SOSV, and Pioneer.
Konjure was bootstrapped and with cryptocurrency in such a new, volatile stage, Konjure couldn't find PMF or a round of funding to continue, so Kai decided it was best to focus on new ventures and close it down.
Sitesire
React Web Development Agency
Sitesire started as a website development company building websites from scratch with the remnants of Konjure UI, and eventually adapted to enterprise businesses and pivoted to React development. It was one of the highest rated agencies on Upwork, garnered hundreds of thousands of dollars and created web apps for 50+ projects, including Gartner and other Fortune 500 companies. After a successful run, Kai shut it down to divert all focus towards Branch.
Branch
Web3 Game Studio
$15M Seed
Kai started Branch with Dayton Mills in 2020, creating a communication environment that fosters serendipity for remote teams. Dayton and Kai met many years ago on Minecraft, and had a partnership back before they both sold their first Minecraft companies. In 2019 they wondered why they hadn't worked together on anything big, knew they wanted to enter the remote work industry, and found their entry point combining all the experience they gained over the years from gaming.
After 6 months of bootstrapping, Branch raised a $1.6 million pre-seed round from Naval Ravikant, Sahil Lavingia, Homebrew, Cindy Bi, Scott Belsky, Joshua Browder, Joshua Buckley (and more...) in September of 2020, and Connor Hollasch joined as CTO shortly after. It features a soundtrack by C418, bringing the Minecraft journey full circle.
Kai stepped down as COO of Branch in April of 2021 but continues stay involved as a shareholder and fan! Branch later pivoted to a web3 game studio.
In May of 2022 Branch announced their $12.5M seed round led by Dragonfly and Polychain.
Cryopets
Whole-body Cryopreservation for Pets
Pre-Seed
Cryopets is an early-stage deeptech startup developing whole-body cryopreservation for pets, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. After a decade in the tech world, Kai finally had enough experience and resources to take on the first big project in the life extension field. Cryopets is building a hybrid facility, being part animal hospital and part cryonics facility. The goal is to scale cryonics through animal hospitals around the country, develop reversible whole-body cryopreservation for small animals, and eventually do the same with humans.
