Alex St. John (President & CTO, hi5)
Alex St. John leads all product strategy, design, development and operations at hi5. Previously, he was CEO and co-founder of WildTangent Inc., the world’s largest privately held game network with over 30 million monthly unique visitors. During his tenure, WildTangent developed a unique and highly successful micro-currency based economy that blended ecommerce and advertiser sponsored play of premium content. Alex also pioneered technology for online game publishing, resulting in an extensive portfolio of rich media delivery and micro-currency based monetization patents. Prior to founding WildTangent, Alex was responsible for Microsoft’s multimedia strategy. He was one of the principal creators of Microsoft’s DirectX technology, which became the foundation for all Windows multimedia applications, 3D graphics, media players, and casual multiplayer games, as well as thousands of PC and Xbox games. Several books have been written about St. John’s exploits at Microsoft including Renegades of the Empire by Michael Drummond, Opening the Xbox by Dean Takahashi, and Masters of Doom by David Kushner. Alex was awarded an honorary degree in Real-Time Interactive Simulation from the DigiPen Institute of Technology for his extensive contributions to innovative game technology and the school’s curriculum. Alex also advises the University of Washington on ways to enhance its technical degree programs and serves as an EIR advisor to the Tech Transfer department.
Bill Mooney (VP, Zynga; GM, FarmVille)
Bill is a vice president at Zynga and the GM of FarmVille, having previously run Mafia Wars and the Casino/Casual/iPhone studio. He joined Zynga after eight years in traditional gaming, including stints at Activision and Lucas Arts, and five years as a trial lawyer. Bill has also written for television, including animation and live-action. Bill has a B.A. from McGill University and a J.D. from the University of Iowa.
Chris Dury (VP Product, GetJar)
Chris leads product management for GetJar, the world’s largest independent mobile app store. Most recently, Chris helped grow scanR, a mobile productivity service, from inception to millions of users. He also co-founded OneFone, a mobile virtual network operator leveraging emerging dual-mode cellular and WiFi phones. In addition, he led product marketing and business development efforts for two VoIP startups. Chris started his career at Intel Corporation. He received an MBA from New York University and a BA from Michigan State University.
Dean Takahashi (Lead writer for GamesBeat, VentureBeat)
Dean Takahashi is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.
Ge Wang (Co-Founder, CTO, & Chief Creative Officer, Smule; Assistant Professor, Stanford)
Ge Wang is the Co-founder, CTO, and Chief Creative Officer of Smule (a.k.a. SonicMule, Inc.), a developer of interactive sonic media. Smule’s mission is to intensely explore expressive audio, enabling creativity for a wide population and new social interactions. Smule’s bestselling iPhone apps include I Am T-Pain, Leaf Trombone World Stage and Ocarina. Concurrently, Dr. Wang is an assistant professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He is the chief-architect and co-creator of the ChucK audio programming language, and the founding director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) and the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO).
John Pleasants (CEO, Playdom)
John Pleasants is CEO of Playdom, a leading social games developer for Facebook, MySpace and hi5. Most recently, John served as President of Publishing and Chief Operating Officer of Electronic Arts (EA), where he oversaw global operations for the $4+ billion gaming company and led its consumer-facing businesses, including EA Mobile, Pogo, EA.com, global online gaming and Rupture. In addition, John drove a push to move EA from a software to a services model, and spearheaded the company’s expansion into social gaming. Prior to joining EA, John served as President and CEO of Revolution Heath and CEO of Ticketmaster, the world’s leading live event ticketing company. During his tenure at Ticketmaster/InteractiveCorp (IAC), John also oversaw several leading online entities such as Evite.com, Match.com, CitySearch.com and ReserveAmerica.com. John is a Director of the Board for The Artists Den, a music production and promotion company, and previously held Board of Director positions with Expedia.com, Active.com, Fastclick, Going.com and Extend Health. John holds a BA from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard University.
Jon Vlassopulos (CEO, Moderati; GM, BellRock Media)
Jon Vlassopulos holds the dual roles of CEO of Moderati and GM, North America for Bellrock Media, Moderati’s parent company. He oversees the company’s initiatives in branded entertainment and digital entertainment services, as well as its mobile personalization business. In this position, Jon has overseen the development of several successful branded entertainment projects, with successes such as the Virtual Zippo Lighter iPhone App, which has had over 3 million downloads thus far, and A&E’s Paranormal State iPhone App, which is the most interactive TV application, with more than 50% of people watching the show also downloading the app. He has seen similar success at Bellrock with projects under way with big-name brands such as Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Myzo and the original programming project, “24 Hours at Sundance”, a real-time, online reality show competition broadcast live from the Sundance Film Festival with Ashton Kutcher, which received over one million views. Jon was most recently Senior Vice President, Digital Media & Branded Entertainment for Endemol, the global leader in entertainment programming. He was responsible for building Endemol’s worldwide digital business and growing the company into new areas such as casual gaming and branded entertainment. He also revolutionized the interactive TV market in the U.S. with his work on hit shows like “Deal or No Deal”. Prior to that, he served as Senior Director, Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at AT&T Wireless, launching major media brands on AT&T services including mMode. While at the carrier, he directed the launch of the first wireless music service, and ran major mobile marketing campaigns with brands like McDonalds and Kelloggs. His background also includes multiple executive positions at Bertelsmann in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Jon received his undergraduate degree from Durham University in Chinese, Economics and Korean. He serves on the board of NATPE, the National Association of Television Program Executives.
Julian Farrior (Founder & CEO, Backflip Studios)
Julian Farrior is founder and CEO of Backflip Studios, a mobile game company focused on bringing innovative and thoughtful titles to an expanding group of casual gamers on the iPhone. Backflip has had four top five overall apps and seen more than 13,000,000 downloads in their first 6 months of operation. Their games include popular titles such as Paper Toss and Ragdoll Blaster. Prior to Backflip, Julian served as an angel investor and VP of BD/Operations at Earthscape, a company that also had early success in the app store. Previously, Julian spent seven years at Yahoo! in various management roles the most recent of which included heading up emerging market search. He is a lifelong video and board gamer who hopes to see Ultima I soon delivered to the iPhone. Julian received his undergraduate education at Colgate University and graduate education at Northwestern University.
Lisa Marino (VP Sales, RockYou)
Lisa Marino is the VP of Sales for RockYou leading all brand sales initiatives for the company. Prior to RockYou Lisa was the National Sales Manager for eBay Motors calling on all major automotive OEMs as well as their franchise dealers. Prior to eBay, Lisa co-founded Cima Systems, a leading fixed operations CRM provider for auto dealers. Lisa started her career in Silicon Valley as a technology M&A investment banker for Montgomery Securities. She earned her MBA from Stanford University School of Business and a BS in Finance from the Wharton School.
Matt Marshall (Editor in Chief, VentureBeat
Founder Matt Marshall covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News until he left in September 2006 to launch VentureBeat as an independent company. In early 2008, VentureBeat hired Anthony Ha and veteran reporter Dean Takahashi. More recently, VentureBeat hired Camille Ricketts and Kim-Mai Cutler. In 2008, the New York Times called VentureBeat one of the “best blogs on the Web,” and now the NYT runs VentureBeat’s articles on its Web site. In March 2009, VentureBeat signed a partnership agreement with IDG to produce DEMO, the leading conference for launching emerging technology products. Matt, who serves as Editor-in-Chief, covered the venture capital beat for the Mercury News from 2001-2006. He significantly expanded the newspaper’s coverage of venture capital during that time, in daily articles and a weekly column called the VC Insider, and then online with his blog SiliconBeat from 2004. Matt was awarded Journalist of the Year by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists in 2002, and the James Madison Freedom of Information award in 2003. These awards were for a series of articles he wrote in conjunction with two successful Mercury News lawsuits, in part instigated by Matt, against California’s public pension fund (CalPERS) and the University of California. The lawsuits sought disclosure of the financial performance of venture capital and other private equity funds that CalPERS and UC had invested in, arguing that state taxpayers and retirees had a right to know these results. As a result of these laws suits, public employees now have full access to information on the performance of their retirement investments. Matt was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 through 1998. He has also written for the Washington Post and several other publications. Matt has a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University.
Michael Chang (CEO & Founder, Greystripe)
Michael Chang is responsible for Greystripe’s market vision and execution. He was most recently at Incubic Venture Capital and was responsible for investments in Internet and software companies. It was at Incubic that Michael and Andy conceived of the ad-supported mobile business model. Michael has an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and has held engineering and marketing product management roles at SAN pioneer Gadzoox Networks. Michael has a BS in EE from Carnegie Mellon University.
Neil Young (Founder & CEO, ngmoco)
Neil Young is the CEO and Founder of ngmoco, creator and publisher of games exclusively for iPhone and iPod touch. Prior to founding ngmoco, Neil held various positions at Electronic Arts, most recently as the Group General Manager of the EA Blueprint Studio group that included Maxis (creators of Spore and The Sims) and EA’s collaborative partnership with Steven Spielberg. Neil joined EA in 1997 as the General Manager of EA’s Origina Systems subsidiary, where he supervised the launch of the world’s first Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing game, UltimaOnline. Prior to EA/Blueprint, Neil served both as Vice President and General Manager of EA Los Angeles (EALA) and EA Maxis where he oversaw all aspects of the studios responsible for the blockbuster franchises Medal of Honor, Command & Conquer, The Lord of the Rings & The Sims. In 2002 and 2003, Neil also led the development of the first The Lord of the Rings games at EA Redwood Shores - The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King. In addition to his other producing and management credits, he was also the creator and driving force behind Majestic, the first Alternate Reality Game (ARG) and a pioneering internet experience that blurred the line between fiction and reality by engaging readers through non-traditional gaming media.
Peter Farago (VP Marketing, Flurry)
Peter Farago brings over 14 years of marketing and product management experience spanning consumer packaged goods, video gaming and mobile industries. At Flurry, the leading cross-platform mobile application analytics provider, Peter is responsible for all facets of product and corporate marketing. Prior to Flurry, Peter led marketing at mobile game maker, Digital Chocolate, helping build the company into a top-ten publisher world-wide. He joined Digital Chocolate from Electronic Arts, where he managed The Sims franchise, the #1 PC game of all-time. Peter began his career in consumer packaged goods at Pacific Sun, where he was head of marketing and sales and increased revenue from $8M to $40M. Peter holds a BS from UC Berkeley and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Peter Relan (Founder and Chairman, YouWeb)
Peter Relan is the Founder and Chairman of YouWeb, the incubator behind Aurora Feint: maker of OpenFeint, the iPhone’s fastest growing social gaming network; CrowdStar, the Social Gaming company and creators of Happy Aquarium and Happy Pets; and Sibblingz, the company building a multi-channel social gaming platform for developers. Peter has spent the last 25 years in Silicon Valley in the networking, software, consumer and mobile services industry, both as product development executive at Oracle and Hewlett Packard and as a serial entrepreneur. Peter is also an active angel investor in, and board member and advisor to, a number of early stage companies. Peter was the Founder and CEO of Business Signatures, sold to Entrust, where he served as Chief Strategy Officer of Entrust. In 1998, Peter joined Louis Borders, founder of Borders Books and Music, to build and launch Webvan’s automated distribution and delivery service for online grocery shopping. As the Founding VP of Oracle’s Internet Division, Peter led Oracle into the Internet market with the creation of Oracle’s Application Server - now a multi-billion product line at Oracle. Peter was Principal Architect of OpenView at Hewlett Packard, also a multi-billion dollar business for HP. Peter lives with his wife and two children in Atherton, CA. He is an avid tennis player, children’s basketball coach and percussionist in Indian Classical Music. He holds a BS from UCLA and a MS from Stanford University.
Randy Angle (Director of Game Design, SGN)
As the Director of Game Design, Randy Angle, another gaming legend, has joined the team to spearhead design for SGN’s games. He has a passion for designing creative and innovative games. His credits include over 60 games, in every genre, on every imaginable platform, many as Lead Designer and Creative Director. Brands he has made games for include: Star Trek, LEGO, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, Spiderman, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, Fairly Odd Parents, Danny Phantom, Jimmy Neutron, Zorro, Deal or No Deal, 1 VS 100 and many original titles.
Roy Bahat (President, IGN Entertainment)
Roy Bahat is now President of IGN Entertainment. He joined IGN Entertainment as General Manager in 2007, previously serving on News Corporation’s business development team in New York. Prior to News Corp., Roy held various roles in the public sector, both in the Office of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and at New York’s 2012 Olympic Bid. He previously worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. Roy graduated from Harvard College and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.
Roy Sehgal (General Manager, Zynga)
Roy Sehgal is General Manager at Zynga, the largest social gaming company on the web. In this role, Roy is building the future of social gaming through the production, development and operation of games that connect the world and drive new revenue streams through virtual item business models. Previously, Roy was the Vice President of Premium Games & Services for MTV Networks’ Nickelodeon Kids & Family division, where he helped build, manage and monetize several of the world’s largest casual game brands and services such as AddictingGames.com, Shockwave.com, NickArcade.com and MyNoggin.com. Roy is a new media veteran with extensive experience building new businesses in the online, digital and mobile industries. Previously, Roy was Vice President of Business and Corporate Development for online entertainment pioneer Atom Entertainment (acquired by Viacom/MTV Networks in 2006), where he managed partnerships, strategy and M&A for AtomFilms.com, AddictingGames.com, and Shockwave.com. Prior to Atom, he was a founding team member and SVP of Business Development at July Systems, Vice President of Mobile Commerce at InfoSpace (NASDAQ: INSP), Director of Business Development at Prio (acquired by InfoSpace in 1999) and a strategy consultant at Marakon Associates. Roy graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Economics.
Sebastien de Halleux (COO, Playfish)
Sebastien de Halleux is the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Playfish, a social gaming company, overseeing distribution, monetization and business development. Prior to Playfish, Sebastien was at Nokia where he was responsible for Strategy and Business Development for the newly formed mobile advertising group. He helped accelerate this key new group by completing the successful acquisition of Enpocket, a US-based mobile advertising company. Prior to Nokia, Sebastien was Strategy and Operations Director at Glu Mobile (nasdaq:GLUU). During his tenure, he structured the European financial planning and analysis organisation and the tactical sales operations department responsible for prioritising, deploying and tracking several million mobile gaming SKUs. He was previously Head of Strategic Alliances at Macrospace where he was responsible for corporate development and key partnerships, resulting in the merger with US-based Sorrent and the formation and integration of Glu Mobile. Prior to Glu Mobile, Sebastien was a management consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, working on Finance and Media strategy projects across EMEA and APAC. Sebastien holds an MEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering from Imperial College.
Simon Khalaf (President & Chief CEO, Flurry)
Simon Khalaf has over 18 years of entrepreneurial experience bringing successful consumer and enterprise products to market. Prior to Flurry, Simon was President and CEO of Vernier Networks, a network security company; President and CEO of Volera, the leading content and video distribution company; VP and GM at Novell; Founder, President and CEO of JustOn, the leading Internet file-sharing service; and Founder, VP of Marketing at Worldtalk, an e-mail and content security company. Simon holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the American University of Beirut and a Master of Engineering from Syracuse University.
Vijay Chattha (Founder & Chief Talker, VSC Consulting & AppLaunchPR)
Vijay Chattha is founder and Chief Talker of VSC Consulting & AppLaunchPR. Vijay has led strategy and public relations efforts for over thirty-five mobile and gaming companies resulting in over $1B in exits and transactions. The company has earned forty PR awards for its creative and results-driven publicity campaigns. VSC’s AppLaunchPR clients have experienced over 350 million downloads on and off deck since 2002.
