Samurai Labs

Rebuilding My Case Studies from the Ground Up

A Brief Preface:

Previously published case studies for Samurai Labs and my recent clients were lost during a technical issue and are being fully recreated. It has given me a chance to reflect on the projects and how to best categorize them.

As I work diligently to rebuild and improve the case studies, each project will be integrated into its own long-form page divided by deliverable. View the relevant projects and media at a glance, below.

Samurai Labs Project List

Project Initiative Description Outcome Media
The Beginning Final Project As part of Professor Galloway’s Brand Strategy course, I evaluated Samurai Labs’ early positioning using brand archetypes and growth frameworks. I argued that Samurai should frame itself less as a stealth AI company and more as a mission-driven brand anchored in cultural relevance. How reframing Samurai’s story around courage and protection made its purpose emotionally resonant rather than technical, earning strong praise and shaping how I approach positioning work today. View Project
Internal Dashboard Created an internal dashboard to surface outreach data in real time for co-founders, board members, investors, and potential investors, ensuring alignment, and accountability. How consolidating and visualizing key outreach metrics with a dashboard and a martech ecosystem dashboard eliminated a GTM roadblock, improved transparency, informed decision-making, and built trust across stakeholders. View Prototype
The Future of Gaming Developed a forecast of the video game industry’s future, using visual storytelling and pop-culture references to engage the Samurai Team. How forward-thinking creative direction, branding, narrative, and vision; brought to life through visual storytelling and cultural touchpoints fell into place against the odds, earning overwhelming approval. View Deck
Branding Inspired by sci-fi and RPG culture, I created Sam, the AI Street Samurai, as an avatar that brought brand personality into an otherwise flat technical product. How introducing a character transformed the brand from abstract to relatable, giving Samurai a pulse and personality. Meet Sam
         
Discord Bot Product Ownership What started as a bot in beta was repositioned with clear ownership and direction, transforming it into a viable product. How systems thinking and project management turned “we have a bot?” into a strategic pillar.
Branding I built an official Discord server and sleek site where users could instantly understand and invite S4m (Sam was taken). How breathing life into a tool turned it into a character, prompting a colleague to quote Seth Godin: This is original sh*t
Website / Discord Server A cyberpunk-inspired data haven for our AI companion S4m, fusing Shadowrun aesthetics, playful lore (NEEEEEEEEEEERD), and interactive elements into a world users could explore, not just visit. How building S4m’s digital home transformed a loose collection of assets into a living, breathing experience where story, style, and function worked together to keep users engaged, and spreading the word across their communities. View Website
Outreach Next task(for investors): Leverage targeting capabilities, audience segmentation, and our then, innovative use of LinkedIn automation to drive adoption of Sam in/on Discord, 10 servers within 2 weeks. How rumination on a flight home from team integration became a strategic pivot, taking us from 20k protected users in a single server to 2M across 30 servers in under two weeks.
Verification & Mass Adoption After securing Discord verification far ahead of schedule, Samurai rapidly scaled to ~2,000 servers. A partnership with Tourney Time Network (8 servers, ~750k members) expanded visibility, and integration with ZeroTwo extended protection to ~300M users. How strategic verification, partnerships, and integrations accelerated adoption, unlocked mass reach, and established Samurai as a trusted presence across major Discord communities.
         
Username Moderation Outreach to Fundraising An A/B outreach test unexpectedly attracted a top gaming VC, leading to a pitch that shifted Samurai’s trajectory, securing a Series A offer. How a pop-culture nod in an outreach message became our plot twist, "If cyberbullies are Ultron, our AI is Vision."
Website Rebuilt the stealth Squarespace site with sharp demos, content strategy, and micro-interactions that highlighted Samurai’s product value. How a product built to lead became the opener for a feature no one asked for. Pivot incoming. View Old Site View New Site
Branding Tasked with putting username moderation front and center to meet board promises on user growth, I framed it as the first line of defense in community safety. From Discord presence to a live demo, moderation was positioned as a movement rather than a feature. How reframing username moderation as a mission-critical safeguard, supported by demos, messaging, and community visibility, drove adoption, built credibility, and elevated perception from tactical utility to strategic differentiator.
Product Development Scraped data to train the models and created an interactive demo that doubled as a feedback loop, capturing adversarial usernames to strengthen the model in real time. How a demo became both proof of scalability and a key product differentiator for investors and potential clients.
SEO Performance Framed username moderation as prevention, not punishment, showing, based on research, that toxic names were predictors of disruption. How the new website claimed Google’s #1 spot for “Username Moderation” and a coveted page-one position for “Content Moderation.”
Content Strategy Framed username moderation as prevention, not punishment, showing toxic names were predictors of disruption. How reframing it as “safety from the first interaction” elevated it from feature to philosophy.
         
Botisimo Partnership Twitch Experiment / Brief Reassessed a dismissed Twitch experiment where interventions were lost in fast chat feeds, proposing ways to resurface them, and explaining that they aren't entirely necessary. How a polished, interactive demo shifted perception from prototype to compelling proof-of-concept. View Experiment View Old Site
Twitch Prototype / Demo Created a Twitch brief and prototype that embedded Samurai interventions into live chat simulations, demonstrating real-time moderation within Twitch environments and laying the groundwork for partnership with Botisimo. How the brief and working prototype showcased Samurai’s value in a live streaming context, sparking a critical partnership and validating broader platform applications. View Prototype View Video
Botisimo Integration Initiated partnership with Botisimo & OpTic Gaming (30k+ creators across Twitch, YouTube, Discord, Facebook Gaming, and Trovo) to extend Samurai’s moderation reach. How integration with Botisimo expanded Samurai overnight, plugging AI into thousands of live channels we couldn’t support directly
         
Main Website Content Strategy During early Discord outreach and prospect calls, the Squarespace website drew criticism; people dismissed it as a “nice template” and questioned the lack of clarity around Samurai’s positioning. I restructured the content to emphasize the mission, core product, and real-world risks it addressed, reframing username moderation as the entry point to a broader trust & safety solution. How the pivot from ‘stealth startup’ and username moderation to credible, mission-driven leader and content moderation built trust with prospects, investors, and the trust & safety community, ensuring the core product was understood as a holistic, preventative solution.
Comparison (Old vs New) Rebuilt the site to replace a generic Squarespace template with a product-focused experience that emphasized Samurai’s mission, technology, and preventative/proactive approach. How the redesign shifted perception from a stealth-mode startup with a template website to a credible, mission-driven company; the new site clarified product value, improved usability and engagement, and built greater trust with prospects, investors, and the trust & safety community. View Old Site View New Site