Dayton Mills

The Russian edition of the American “30 Under 30” list, published by Forbes Kazakhstan on February 23, 2023, describes him as a MissouriMissouriMissouri is a state of the United States bounded on the east by the Mississippi River; its capital is Jefferson City, its largest city is Kansas City, and its second-largest is St. Louis. It was admitted to the Union on August 10, 1821, as the 24th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 6,154,913.Open the full entry native. GeekWire writes that he taught himself to code at 12 or 13 by watching YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry videos; he said: “I taught myself how to code at 12, 13, by watching YouTube videos, and that was kind of my thing,” and he said he had always known, even since that age, that he wanted to run a game studio. TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry wrote in 2020 that he tried at 13 to create his own game studio, even hiring an artist to do the illustrations, and that the studio failed because he was a “kid, 13, and had no money”; he said: “I spent the majority of my time online playing games with people,” and said that his whole day was spent playing video games with people to talk to in the background, because he was on constant calls with people.⁠[1][2][3]

TechCrunch writes that Branch’s two founders, Dayton Mills and Kai Micah MillsKai Micah MillsKai Micah Mills is an American entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of the pet cryopreservation company Cryopets, and a co-founder of CryoDAO and HydraDAO.Open the full entry, had since the age of 15 built Minecraft servers to sell to gamers, each netting thousands of dollars a month. GeekWire writes that he dropped out of high school in Missouri in 2015, finding school a waste of time, to pursue game design, beginning by running private Minecraft servers for profit. The Forbes list entry states that he dropped out of school at 16 to devote himself to building Minecraft servers.⁠[3][2][1]

GeekWire writes that he then coded Statscraft, a SaaS plug-in that gave Minecraft server operators user analytics, and sold it in 2016 to the commerce platform Tebex. The post “Welcoming Statscraft to the Buycraft family” on Tebex’s blog states that Buycraft had recently taken over a US startup called Statscraft, which would for now keep running in its current form as a stand-alone platform and, once absorbed into Buycraft, would be known as “Buycraft Analytics,” with users’ Statscraft data moved to their Buycraft Analytics accounts. The Forbes list entry states that he developed a program that analyzed the number of players, their locations and peak loads on the system, and in 2017 sold the app for several thousand dollars and bought a ticket to San Francisco.⁠[2][4][1]

GeekWire writes that he next joined a crypto startup in San Diego and then built an app called Beekn, which is now defunct.⁠[2]

GeekWire writes that in 2020 he co-founded Branch in Seattle with Connor Hollasch, another ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry “30 Under 30” honoree; the Forbes list entry likewise states that in 2020 he and co-founder Connor Hollasch (spelled Коннор Холласч in Russian) launched Branch, a startup making social Web3 games. TechCrunch wrote in November 2020 that Branch’s founders were Dayton Mills and Kai Micah Mills and that the platform was the result of years of experimentation by them; the article states that Kai Micah Mills had dropped out of high school to run Minecraft servers full-time.⁠[2][1][3]

In a blog post of January 20, 2021, the investment firm Homebrew presents Branch (branch.gg) as a virtual HQ for remote teams whose product borrows heavily from its founders’ experience with game mods, Minecraft and other user-built worlds; the post states that Homebrew made the first investment in Branch.⁠[5]

In an article of November 18, 2020, TechCrunch named Branch as one of the three virtual HQ startups that had risen to the top (the others being Gather and Huddle), describing it as built by “Gen Z gamers” and placed between work and play. The article states that Branch’s virtual office had meeting rooms, lunch tables and a “literal watercooler,” that most employees logged on for 12 hours, and that an Election Day watch party was held in it; Dayton Mills said that, to keep the platform relevant enough to be used but passive enough not to feel like a burden, the team added features such as no mandatory video or audio, the aim being to keep it casual so people could actually be online for six hours a day; each user had an icon that showed when they talked, and spatial audio let users hear only people nearby, which the article says gave “the feeling of a hallway bump-in.” The article states that more than 500 companies were on Branch’s waitlist and that retention of current users after a month was 60%; the company had raised $1.5 million from investors including Homebrew, Naval RavikantNaval RavikantNaval Ravikant is an entrepreneur and angel investor and a co-founder of AngelList. Early on he co-founded the review site Epinions; he and Babak Nivi later grew AngelList out of the startup-fundraising blog Venture Hacks, and he co-founded the cryptocurrency hedge fund MetaStable Capital and Spearhead, which backs founders to make angel investments. His views on startups and life were compiled into the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.Open the full entry, Sahil Lavingia and Cindy Bi.⁠[3]

The article states that one of the founders said he had hired people, and fired people, entirely in the virtual offices, and that doors made a big difference; he said there were hundreds of chats a day, some lasting only a few seconds. Dayton Mills said: “You can build a space where everyone comes to work,” after which one can build the spaces where people go after work: “And it kind of spirals from there.” He thought the winning company in this crowded space would be the one that can create a space that cultivates and sparks spontaneity: “You can’t create the serendipity itself directly,” so one should create that environment.⁠[3]

The Thiel Foundation named the next class of Thiel Fellows, 23 people, on January 6, 2022, and he was among them. The list reads “Dayton Mills: 23, Seattle, WA” and describes his project as Branch.gg, a social gaming platform focused on creating, sharing and monetizing instantly playable games and experiences in the metaverse. The announcement states that the program, launched in 2011, gives each fellow $100,000 and mentorship from the foundation’s network of technology founders, investors and scientists over two years, that the only requirement is to pause college enrollment, and that the program encourages young people to pursue big ideas and start companies instead of attending college.⁠[6]

CoinDeskCoinDeskCoinDesk is a cryptocurrency media, events, index, and data company founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York. Its businesses include the CoinDesk news website, the annual crypto industry conference Consensus, and the CoinDesk Indices index business. In November 2023, the digital asset exchange Bullish acquired CoinDesk from Digital Currency Group, and CoinDesk has since operated as an independent subsidiary of Bullish.Open the full entry wrote on May 11, 2022 that Branch, a Seattle-based gaming startup, had announced a $12.5 million seed round to build a “play-to-earn” game that keeps crypto out of sight; participants included Mechanism Play, TCG Crypto, Dragonfly Capital, Polychain CapitalPolychain CapitalPolychain Capital is a digital asset investment firm founded in 2016 by Olaf Carlson-Wee and headquartered in San Francisco. Its business covers actively managed blockchain asset portfolios and investments in related companies, with public investments spanning base networks, cryptography, on-chain finance, payments, data and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry, Coinbase VenturesCoinbase VenturesCoinbase Ventures invests in crypto technology and Web3, participating at the early stages of startup teams in areas including blockchain protocols, infrastructure, decentralized finance, and developer tools, and provides support through operating experience and partnership resources.Open the full entry, Three Arrows Capital and Polygon Studios chief executive Ryan Wyatt, among others. The article states that the game was browser-based and free to play, that players could own islands as NFTs, each with a different mix of virtual resources that could be crafted into items or structures, and that the “earn” element came from players paying one another to harvest materials or reselling items as NFTs on secondary marketplaces; the full release was slated for that summer, with the game built out week by week with close community participation.⁠[7]

He described the game as “Animal Crossing meets Minecraft with a bit of Runescape”; he said that most play-to-earn games require buying an NFT upfront to play, while Branch was designed so that players might never need to know what an NFT is, and he expected the game to attract U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry users interested in virtual real estate, Axie Infinity-style players seeking income, and casual gamers. In a post of May 23, 2022, the investor Homebrew called him an “online native” for whom online spaces and relationships had always been important, and wrote that the seed round would fund the team’s growth.⁠[7][8]

In the post “What is Castaways?” on the Castaways blog he writes that he is the creator of Castaways, which began in 2022 as a plan for a multiplayer sandbox game inspired by Minecraft, RuneScape and Animal Crossing and was developed through his studio, Branch, which he founded.⁠[9]

GeekWire writes that Castaways was a free-to-play, massively multiplayer survival game for web browsers, then in alpha, in which players are shipwrecked survivors on a remote island who build a home for themselves and others, and the article compares it with Animal Crossing and Minecraft; its Web3 features were so low-key that the writer did not notice it was a Web3 game until finding a menu option to connect a crypto wallet. The game draws on custom Minecraft server experiences such as the popular Skyblock map: instead of entering a full world, players start on a small island and build it up from nothing; players who are done with the game can sell their islands and inventories as NFTs for varying amounts of ETHEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry, and Branch uses an established token rather than issuing its own currency, for long-term sustainability.⁠[2]

He credits Castaways’ growth in 2022 to its “free to own” initiative, which gave minted NFTs to active community members. He said: “We’ve been building this game iteratively, in public, for many months.” GeekWire writes that when the game had only raft-floating gameplay and about 100 daily active users, Branch minted raft NFTs for them; by the end of August word of mouth and social media had pushed those free raft NFTs to roughly 20 ETH each. Before adding islands, Branch minted 500 island NFTs that it pledged to airdrop to regular players, and 25,000 users were soon competing for one. Despite the “crypto winter” of late 2022, users grew from 1,000 in September to 300,000 in November. He said that Branch had many collections planned and that they would always be free, and that many Web3 users come for the giveaways and stay for the game.⁠[2]

GeekWire writes that Branch raised a $15 million round from investors including Dragonfly, Coinbase and Evernew Capital. He said he wanted Branch to prove that Web3 gaming is viable: “I want to build the first real popular game that actually implements it.” He said gamers’ dislike of NFTs was understandable given their long-standing dislike of monetization, and that it was ironic for a “technology that was invented to liberate them from the thing that they hate”; he said NFTs could move ownership from corporations to communities: “At least, that’s the promise, and I don’t think anyone’s actually executed on it well yet.”⁠[2]

GeekWire writes that in the same month in which Castaways reached 300,000 users (November 2022) he was named one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30.” The Russian edition of the American list published by Forbes Kazakhstan lists him (24) together with Connor Hollasch (25) in the Games category as co-founders of Branch Technologies, and his profile gives him as 24 years old and a co-founder of Branch; the entry states that Castaways was initially free but that super users could obtain special in-game items to sell to other users, with Branch taking 10% of every transaction; that the startup had raised $14 million for development; and that, although still in alpha, Castaways had 125,000 monthly active users.⁠[2][1]

In “What is Castaways?” he writes that the Castaways game was in development for two years until it was shut down in July 2024; he says the game was too large for a studio of Branch’s size and that he decided to shut it down. He then relaunched Castaways with a focus on building its world, “The Islands,” which he loved and which can support multiple games and other media such as animation: its stories explore celebrating differences, finding purpose, realizing potential, destiny and fate, and man versus nature, and its characters are “castaways” who feel isolated in their own worlds and are taken from them through some form of magic during a significant life event; the characters are hand-drawn, each with an individually developed personality, and appear as a daily webcomic on the characters page, and planned projects include animated shorts and games that explore The Islands. He writes that thousands of people have engaged through the Discord server or social media, and that the community page lists ways to get involved.⁠[9]

The One Big Sip website presents One Big Sip as an independent game studio “making absurdly juicy games,” a small, self-funded indie studio whose co-founders are Dayton Mills and Zack Harmon and whose first game is We Steal From Old People: The Game. The Steam store page shows that the game was released on November 10, 2026, with One Big Sip as developer and publisher; it is a single-player action roguelite for PC in which players beat swarms of old people and take their bricks to become more powerful, hire goons and make brick builds that earn passive income, and the description likens the player to a “brick vampire.” The game’s page states that it is presented by Reckless Ben and One Big Sip, with Reckless Ben and Dayton Mills as executive producers and Zack Harmon as engineering lead. As of November 12, 2026, the Steam page showed 94% of 152 user reviews as positive, with an overall rating of “Very Positive.”⁠[10][11][12][13]

As of November 2026 his GitHub profile gives his location as San Francisco, and its popular repositories include kitava-calculator, a nutrition calculator for Kitava Kitchen.⁠[14]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

One Big Sip: Official website: https://www.onebigsip.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

X: Public account: https://x.com/daytonmills (opens in a new window).⁠[13][14]

GitHub: Public account: https://github.com/daytonmills (opens in a new window).⁠[14]