Long Live Disco: From Pitch Deck To A Million Wishlists

Some milestones land harder than others. This week, our portfolio company Brain Jar Games crossed 1,000,000 Steam wishlists for Dead as Disco, the rhythm-action brawler launching into Early Access on May 5, 2026. Will Cook and the team marked the moment with a thank you to the community: "Thanks for keeping the Dead as Disco dream alive."

We're proud to have been on the dance floor since track one.

The Intro That Started It All

Two and a half years ago, the founding CEO of another game studio sent a short email connecting Will to me. We hadn't ended up backing her studio but she'd come away with enough respect for how we work to send us the next great founder she met. That kind of generosity is the lifeblood of this industry and we do our best to pay it forward from the investor side.

Will, then in Istanbul, asked if we could find a slot. We jumped on a call a few days later, me in Lisbon, him pitching the earliest version of Brain Jar's vision over video. What came across immediately wasn't just the concept — a stylish, rhythm-driven brawler with a clear pop-culture spine. It was the team and the plan.

Will had three original IPs already to his name and a creative-director's instinct, but he wasn't pitching solo. He'd lined up two of his most talented collaborators as co-founders: Krys Kozlowski running audio (the soul of any rhythm game) and Rohan Knuckey running art and animation (the soul of this one). Together, they'd thought hard about platforms, about TikTok-native distribution, about a viable two-year build to launch. They were a unit before they were a company.

From Pitch To Term Sheet

About two weeks later, Will walked the full Transcend investment team through the deck. By that evening, Brett had the good news email out the door. By Sunday, our term sheet was in front of the founders. They signed it the same day. Menlo soon came in to co-lead, with a curated set of gaming, music, and influencer angels alongside us. We have found that kind of speed only happens when conviction is mutual.

Heads Down

The team went quiet, in the best way. Monthly updates came in like clockwork. We saw Will at Gamescom in Cologne and watched the founding trio finish building out the team around them. In December 2024, the world got its first glimpse: the Dead as Disco alpha teaser released on TikTok and a few short videos later, the team had their first viral hit validating the early concept.

Going Viral In A Brutal Series A Market

Steam Next Fest in June 2025 was the inflection point. Dead as Disco landed in the Top 5 Most-Played demos. Within three weeks, 400,000 wishlists were on the board and the game was ranked 93rd globally on Steam. On June 10, 2025, Anthony Franklin II at Vice published "I Have Seen the Light, and Its Name Is Dead as Disco," calling the Steam Next Fest demo "an absolute banger" and writing that the game has everything it needs to be one of the best indie releases of its year. By October, the demo was approaching a million unique players and active wishlists were approaching 600K.

The fundraise that wrapped around it tells a different kind of story. By early 2025 the Series A market for games was as tight as it had been in years. The Brain Jar team, now with Adam Gershowitz onboard as COO running the process alongside Will, worked a list of more than 300 leads across investors, partners, and publishers, took meetings that didn't return calls, and kept building. We ran the Transcend playbook alongside providing lead suggestions, warm intros, message coaching, and the occasional reality check on offers that weren't right. With the demo release around the corner, Sikander pushed the team to enable public content sharing. It turned out to matter. But none of that would have counted without a demo that played as well as it looked. The Brain Jar team built it note by note and frame by frame into a game players couldn't stop sharing.

It was the post-GDC demo traction that finally moved the room. The pace of growth coming out of Steam Next Fest changed the conversation overnight: a process that had been a hard slog turned into an actual process, and the team closed their next round in the summer of 2025 with Transcend continuing to participate.

Founders who can hold their nerve through that kind of market, and let the product do the heavy lifting, are rare. Will, Krys, Rohan, Adam, and the team did exactly that.

The Work Between The Milestones

Headlines compress the story. Most of what happens between rounds is unglamorous and quiet. That's where we tried to earn our seat on the cap table.

We made introductions to global brands exploring gaming partnerships, to platform holders, to publishers, to talent that came free as the industry contracted, and to relevant Series A funds when the time was right. We coached on monthly investor updates, on demo strategy ahead of Early Access, on how to read the marketing playbook that breakout hits had run before them. We showed up at dinners at GDC and Gamescom, hallway intros at PGC, a seat at the table for the partnership conversations that needed one. And when offers came in that didn't pencil out, including more than one publishing deal, we did the analysis fast and called it straight.

None of that built the game. Will, Krys, Rohan, Adam, and the team built the game. But great founders deserve investors who do more than wire and wait, and Brain Jar gave us the chance to put in that work.

A Million Strong

And now this: 1,000,000 wishlists, publishing offers on the table, and a launch week that's about to test everything the team has built.

To Will, Krys, Rohan, Adam, and the entire Brain Jar crew: from the first call across continents, you've never stopped earning this. The team art tucked at the top of this post says it best: the dream is alive because you kept it alive.

We'll see you on May 5. Bring the boombox.

- Shanti

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About Transcend

Transcend is a top quartile early-stage venture firm that backs AI-native entrepreneurs building the next generation of interactive entertainment. In a $263B global industry where AI is rewriting the economics, we partner with the founders leading that shift from pre-seed through Series A. Founded in 2020 by veterans with 70+ years of operator experience and $10B+ in lifetime revenue. Learn more at transcend.fund or follow us on LinkedIn.