Kashkick's Lisanne Vera on AI disruption and bringing value to players

Pocket Gamer Connects, the leading international conference series for the global games industry, returns to London on January 19th to 20th, 2026. 

The must-attend conference will bring together 3,000 delegates from 70+ countries, including decision makers from key international games hubs across the globe. Companies set to join the show include Supercell, Epic Games, Duolingo, CD Projekt Red, Tencent, PlayStation, EA, AppLovin, TikTok and many more.

PGC London will host 32 tracks across two days, including at the Apps Business Summit (January 19th) and the Beyond Games: Transmedia Summit (January 20th).

One of the companies heading to PGC London and sending speakers to the show is Kashkick. Ahead of the show, we caughtt up with VP of growth Lisanne Vera to discuss her thoughts on AI's impact on the games industry and the importance of bringing value to players.

Vera is a seasoned growth marketing executive with over a decade of expertise specialising in user acquisition and funnel optimisation across high-scale digital platforms.

As the VP of growth at Kashkick, she leads the company's customer acquisition engine; crafting performance strategies that fuse data analytics, rapid experimentation, and behavioural insights to drive user growth at scale.

The Kashkick team will heading to PGC London and will have speakers on two panels: 'Best Practices For Navigating The Rewarded UA Space' and 'David vs Goliath: How Can Smaller Studios Compete With Big Studios In The UA Space?'

PocketGamer.biz: What’s the most important key performance indicator (KPI) for you - and why?

Lisanne Vera: Kashkick is a gaming marketplace, not a single title, so it's a little bit different for us. But our most important key performance indicator is what action the user takes on day one: do they install a game? And if so, was it whatever was on top or were they intentional about finding the right game for them? How long did they play in that initial session? Did they start a second session within that same day? 

What do you think the next big disruptor in mobile games will be?

AI such as ChatGPT and the like will become disrupters. The same way people currently utilise Google or Reddit to determine what game might best match their interests, people will soon turn to AI for quicker, more tailored responses.

Additionally, they will compare competing titles across the same genre to figure out which has the best user experience and why. Also, they can and will search cheat codes or hacks to advance quicker or game the system.

What do you enjoy most about working in the mobile games industry?

I love that at the end of the day it's always about bringing value (and joy) to the user. Yes the games make money, but teams are designed to come up with concepts and products that users will enjoy enough that they will want to spend their time on it.

It's not a predatory industry trying to trick users out of their money. We're literally building and marketing products that make people's days better. 

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received that you can pass on to others?

"We can do anything, but we can't do everything at once."

I love this advice and phrase because it reminds me to focus on what matters: impact, prioritise my and my team's time, do a few things well and then move on to the next, versus do a dozen things mediocrely for the sake of speed.

What was the fundamental appeal of the mobile games industry that brought you to it?

It feels like unlimited opportunity. It's not like appliance sales or insurance where users typically only churn every so often, and it's not quite like ecommerce where users only have a certain amount of money to spend or only need a specific item.

Anyone with a phone can be a customer/consumer on any day of the year, even multiple days of the same week or month. Everyone is a customer we can appeal to.

We can even appeal to the same customer over and over again with new products/titles. The target audience is anyone: everyone.