When platforms control your distribution, a single policy change can rewrite your entire business. Few founders know that better than Or Briga and Shai Arnon, co-founders of Galleon, the team behind the native direct-to-consumer (D2C) stack powering some of SuperPlay’s top-grossing casual titles.
In this episode of Secret Stash, hosts Justin Kan and Archie Stonehill sit down with Or and Shai to talk about shutting down their previous startup, why they built a fully native D2C suite, and why joining Stash was the next logical step in their mission to help studios reclaim margin, data, and player relationships.
Tune into the latest episode below or wherever you get your podcasts — or keep reading for the highlights.
What is Galleon?
Most payment providers want to be your merchant of record (MoR). Galleon deliberately avoided it.
Or Briga, 1:45 – “We built a D2C suite, kind of like white label. We are not a merchant of record. We work exclusively with large studios that want to feel they own the relationship with the customer.”
Instead, Galleon gives studios an end-to-end toolkit to:
- run large-scale d2c operations while staying MoR themselves
- own the direct relationship with players
- control everything from native in-app checkout to link-out flows and alternative distribution
For non-payments experts, Or backs up to explain what MoR really means.
Or Briga, 2:15 – “Merchant of record means you’re responsible for all the tax reporting and filing, chargebacks, refunds… you’re in charge of the relationship between you and Visa and Mastercard. Most studios prefer not to deal with it and choose a partner like Stash to take care of everything.”
Galleon slots in alongside that MoR partner, helping big studios keep their brand front and center while still running D2C at scale.
From esports training to D2C pioneers
Before Galleon, Or and Shai weren’t payments founders. They were building tools for competitive gamers.
Or Briga, 5:40 – “Our first startup was a training platform for competitive gamers. We wanted to extract data from the game using AI, find strengths and weaknesses, and build personalized training plans.”
That company, NOVOS, raised meaningful funding but ran headfirst into a wall: publisher control.
- Epic limited the number of tournaments third parties like NOVOS could run.
- Their product depended on a platform that could change the rules overnight.
- User acquisition costs spiked as bigger companies flooded the market.
Or Briga, 13:40 – “We joined the party too late. The cost of acquisition went up so dramatically we couldn’t compete. We didn’t see a clear path to winning.”
They made the painful call to shut the company down and learned a lesson many founders avoid for too long: sometimes the most responsible move is to stop the bleeding and reset.
Learning the hard way about platform dependence
NOVOS didn’t just fail because of competition. It failed because of platform risk.
Justin Kan, 8:10 – “That example of Epic changing its rules is a classic example of how you can get screwed by building on someone else’s land. Entrepreneurs see an opportunity, build on a popular platform, and then at some point the platform changes its mind.”
Shai points out the full-circle irony:
Shai Arnon, 9:10 – “Epic used to be the platform that could kill our startup with a policy change. Now they’re the ones paving the way for D2C companies so studios aren’t reliant on platforms anymore.”
Archie connects it to the broader mobile ecosystem:
Archie Stonehill, 9:30 – “Game developers were stunned that a partner they relied on so heavily could alter their business model so drastically. That realization - ‘we don’t own our customers, we don’t have their data’ - was a big motivator for D2C adoption.”
Justin ties it to a familiar pattern across the internet:
- Platforms centralize demand (app stores, social networks, marketplaces).
- Over time, they raise the “rent” — taking a larger share of every dollar.
- Merchants and studios eventually push back and look for ways to own their customers again.
The pivot that created Galleon
After shutting down NOVOS, the easiest path would have been to take jobs elsewhere. Instead, Or and Shai made a different decision.
Shai Arnon, 15:30 – “The day after we closed NOVOS, we realized the most valuable asset we’d gained was our partnership. We got offers, but the first decision we made was that we wanted to keep working together.”
They turned to longtime advisors Gilad Almog and Eyal Netzer, co-CEOs of SuperPlay, for guidance and heard a vision for D2C that felt fundamentally different from what anyone else in the industry was saying.
That vision clicked with their own passions:
- huge scale (millions of daily active users)
- consumer-facing products where small changes move big numbers
- an obsession with checking the dashboard every morning to see what changed
From there, they pivoted from tools around games to building games themselves, a skill-based casual game that couldn’t rely on Apple or Google’s payment systems.
They had to own payments from top to bottom.
Or Briga, 7:30 – “Because it was a skill-based game, we had to take care of payments ourselves. We couldn’t use Apple and Google. That put us in a unique intersection between payments, casual games, and everything in between.”
That intersection became the foundation for Galleon.
Why Galleon bet on native D2C
When Galleon started, most of the D2C conversation was about webshops. Powerful, but heavy.
Or and Shai made a different bet: native experiences first.
- Build alternative Android APKs that plug in Galleon’s payments instead of Google Play Billing.
- Combine that with web checkouts and link-out flows when the iOS ruling opened that door in the US.
Or Briga, 19:15 – “We started with one game. We built a machine that could take a build, extract everything Google-related - updates, payment systems, tax receipts - and replace it with our system.”
Then timing hit.
The U.S. iOS ruling allowed external payment link-outs, and Galleon moved fast.
Or Briga, 20:20 – “Within a week we were live with web checkout for two games. We already had the payments infrastructure and a strong relationship with the studio teams. Everyone was aligned that D2C was a priority.”
Today, Galleon is:
- live across three SuperPlay titles: Dice Dreams, Domino Dreams and Disney Solitaire
- processing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual volume
- running constant UX and pricing experiments that return data the next day
That tight loop between game teams, monetization teams, and payments experiments has become Galleon’s superpower.
D2C as a new optimization lever
For years, studios focused on two levers:
- lowering user acquisition (UA) costs
- increasing lifetime value (LTV) through better monetization
Those are now close to optimized for most top studios. D2C opens a third lever: reclaiming platform fees.
Or Briga, 11:55 – “Studios have optimized UA and LTV for so many years it’s close to perfection. With D2C, you open a whole new area of optimization: how much can we take back from the 30%+ Apple and Google take?”
Incremental product changes might move metrics 1%. Moving a meaningful share of revenue to D2C can move bottom-line profitability 20-30% or more.
That’s why Or describes D2C as a “dramatic” shift and why studios are suddenly putting so much effort into it.
Why Galleon joined Stash
So why sell Galleon to Stash instead of staying independent? For Or and Shai, the answer starts with philosophy.
Shai Arnon, 26:00 – “We don’t only care about signing clients and giving them tools. We care that they succeed, that they understand what they should do with D2C. We care about increasing wallet share without damaging gross revenue. When we saw Stash’s passion for user experience and for the details, we felt like this was the right home.”
On the Stash side, Justin and Archie saw three things:
- entrepreneurial energy and hunger
- a methodology built on embedding deeply with customers
- a product that already resonated with one of the world’s top casual studios
Justin Kan, 29:30 – “When we were thinking about joining forces, I always think through the lens of people. These guys are hungry entrepreneurs. You always want that talent inside your company.”
Archie saw a shared, product-first approach to D2C:
Archie Stonehill, 27:30 – “We both share an appreciation for games as products. The distribution experiences we enable have to support that game as a core product and fit natively, reinforcing what players love, whether that’s luck mechanics or characters.”
Together, Galleon and Stash can now offer studios:
- native APK and in-game payment experiences
- link-out and webshop flows
- global MoR coverage with tax, compliance, and risk handled
- D2C playbooks tuned across both top-tier and mid-market studios
How native D2C becomes a win–win–win
One concern with D2C is cannibalization: will shifting spend away from the app stores hurt total revenue?
Or has a different view.
Or Briga, 28:10 – “It creates a true win for everybody. Players get more for their money. Studios keep a huge chunk of the revenue. And obviously Apple and Google still receive revenue — you can’t convert everyone to D2C in one day.”
Even when a player chooses not to use a D2C option, Galleon and Stash work to make sure the purchase still completes via in-app purchase, without friction.
The real win comes when studios take those saved fees and reinvest them into:
- better in-game value for players
- more generous loyalty and bonus programs
- smarter marketing that feeds the whole ecosystem
What great acquisitions look like
Justin spends part of the episode talking about what makes acquisitions work and fail.
- Bad acquisitions: founders join, hit culture shock, and get buried in rules and process.
- Good acquisitions: founders keep autonomy, get resources, and are protected from bureaucracy.
He points to Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch as a positive example:
Justin Kan, 32:45 – “They assigned a liaison, an Amazon executive who basically worked for Emmett (Twitch’s CEO) and acted as a diplomat to the rest of Amazon. They kept funding Twitch but didn’t tell him ‘you need to do X, Y, Z.’ Twitch went from a risky inflection point to many times bigger than it was.”
What’s next
Looking ahead, everyone on the episode agrees: native D2C is only getting started.
With new Android rules, evolving iOS policy, and growing comfort with sideloading in certain markets, the category is poised to grow fast.
Archie Stonehill, 36:20 – “Especially with the new Google rules, it’s a category that’s got nowhere to go but up.”
Or thinks we’re heading back to where Galleon began:
Or Briga, 36:25 – “It’s funny, full cycle. We started with APKs, moved to direct links, and now we’re back in APKs and native experiences. 2026 is going to be all about native experiences.”
Key takeaways
- Platform risk is real – Epic’s tournament rules and app store policies show how fragile platform-dependent businesses can be.
- D2C is a new profit lever – reclaiming 25-30% in platform fees can move profitability far more than incremental LTV or UA tweaks.
- Native matters – the best D2C experiences feel like part of the game, not bolted-on web forms.
- Great acquisitions protect autonomy – the goal is to inject entrepreneurial energy into Stash, not bury Galleon in process.
- 2026 will be about native experiences – APKs, sideloading, and in-game D2C flows will be core strategic topics for any top-grossing studio.
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