Best Startup
At Best Startup US we track over 1,000,000 US startups and over 3 million people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top California based Founder operating in the Gaming space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.us.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Chad Hurley
Co-Founder and Chairman of GreenPark Sports
Chad Hurley is the Co-Founder & Former CEO of YouTube. In October 2006 he, along with the other founders, sold the company for $1.65 billion to Google. Prior to YouTube he worked in eBay’s PayPal division, where he helped design the original PayPal logo.
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About GreenPark Sports: GreenPark Sports is a social sports gaming developer designed to create a virtual sports environment for sports and eSports fans.
Ken Martin
CEO & Co-Founder of GreenPark Sports
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About GreenPark Sports: GreenPark Sports is a social sports gaming developer designed to create a virtual sports environment for sports and eSports fans.
Kun Gao
Co-Founder, President & COO of GGWP
Kun Gao joined GGWP as Co-Founder, President & COO.
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About Crunchyroll, GGWP: GGWP provides a gaming tool to help reduce toxic and disruptive in the game.
GEORGE NG
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of GGWP
George Ng joined GGWP as Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer.
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About GGWP: GGWP provides a gaming tool to help reduce toxic and disruptive in the game.
Tommy Krul
Founder & CTO of Super Evil Mega Corp
Previously at Riot Games, Gazillion, Factor 5 and Guerilla Games, Tommy is the architect of the Super Evil engine and technology approach.
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About Super Evil Mega Corp: Super Evil Megacorp is developing core games for tablet, mobile, and emerging platforms.
Richard Bernardino
Founder & CEO, Software Architect of Orchidware Studios
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About Orchidware Studios, Project Blue Butterfly, Project Shrub, Project Umami: Fun, exciting, fascinating video games for players of all ages to enjoy.
Ankush Gera
Founder/CEO of Junglee Games
Stage-agnostic angel investor. Founder/CEO at Junglee Games. Headquartered in San Francisco, Junglee is South East Asia’s fastest growing skill money gaming company with over 10 million users. Previously founded Monsoon Company (acquired by Capital One), adigital agency that helped Yammer, TOMS, Zazzle, HP, and other fortune 100 clients launch their mobile experiences. Ankush serves on the board of Kunai and is an active angel investor in startups like 15five, DilMil, Immediately and Cloudability. He is an LP in Kae Capital and the Tandeme Fund and a Venture Partner at Unshackled.
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About Cloudability, Junglee Games, Junglee Rummy: Junglee Games develops cutting-edge gaming technology and customized licensing solutions for desktop and mobile platforms.
Matt Clemenson
Co-Founder & President of Lottery.com
Matt oversees LesConcierges’ global technology strategy and implementation, including information technology, security and compliance, and software development. Matt has led technology teams for over ten years, and prior to joining LesConcierges in January 2012, he was Head of Internal IT at Hotwire.com. With more than four years with Hotwire and Expedia, Matt helped to establish enterprise best practices while gaining knowledge about the travel industry. Matt is a perpetual student of business and a serial entrepreneur with many successful business ventures under his belt, from mobile apps to laundromats. He is constantly in pursuit of the next big achievement, and he fundamentally understands that every end user is actually a customer. Matt spends his spare time learning new things, such as piano and Italian, though he claims that none of it sticks with him. Always looking for the next opportunity, he serves as an advisor to several small firms and startups, keeping him ever learning new tech skills. Matt and his wife of six years, Lolita, volunteer with various philanthropic organizations as a way to give back.
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About Lottery.com: Lottery.com is a lottery ticket management service that allows users to play and monitor the lottery from their phones.
Ali Moiz
Founder of VULCUN
Founder at Stonks.
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About Stonks, VULCUN: The largest prize pools in Fantasy eSports
Justin Waldron
Co-Founder and President of Playco
Justin Waldron is Co-Founder & President of Playco, and previously Co-Founder / EVP of Product of Zynga, the world’s largest mobile game company. Zynga IPO’d in 2011 with a $10 billion valuation and over $1b in annual revenue. Justin is an angel investor in Lambda School, Substack, and 60+ other companies. He mentors young entrepreneurs at The Thiel Foundation’s Thiel Fellowship program.
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About Playco, Zynga: Playco is a developer of instant-play games across a variety of platforms.
Ben Hantoot
Co-Founder & Partner of Cards Against Humanity
Ben Hantoot is a co-founder and partner of Cards Against Humanity. He is responsible for running the company’s supply chain, directing product design, managing large vendor accounts, oversees software development, and writes poop jokes. Ben is also the co-founder and partner of Blackbox and Dinosaur Coffee. He is previously affiliated with Hook as the company’s creative director. Ben has a bachelor’s degree in psycholinguistics at Brown University.
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About Cards Against Humanity: Cards Against Humanity is a free party game which is as despicable and awkward as its players.
Craig Hochstadt
Founder & COO of Nextpro
Craig Hochstadt was born in Columbia, Maryland on July 5, 1980. He attended and graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2003 where he majored in communications and also played lacrosse. Professionally, Craig has worked on a number of successful marketing campaigns, projects and entrepreneurial-related roles in sports, music, entertainment, and theatrical movie marketing. A few of his personal interests and hobbies include technology, entrepreneurship, biohacking, meditation, dogs, Apple products, the “Internet of Things”, travel, the Pacific Ocean, and college and professional sports (specifically football, basketball, and lacrosse). Craig is also an avid fan, user and consumer of two special caffeinated beverages: 1. Ceremonial grade matcha green tea. Matcha is a finely ground powder of a specially grown and processed form of green tea. In traditional Chinese and Japanese matcha green tea, a ceremony is centered on the preparation, serving, and drinking of matcha green tea. 2. Bulletproof Coffee – which is a butter-coffee combo that has taken the health community by storm and was created by world-famous biohacker and author of the Bulletproof Diet, Dave Asprey. Today Craig maintains his passion for technology and entrepreneurship. He one day hopes to invent something that will help make the world a better place. Craig and his wife currently reside in Los Angeles, California
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About Nextpro: NextPro creates & produces over 50K games per year across 5 sports, and distribute this content to a large and captive audience.
Jordan Maron
Co-Founder, Creative Director of XREAL, Inc.
Jordan Maron, known to many by the alias “CaptainSparklez”, has been producing web video content for the last six years. His work, most of which is focused on gaming, has amassed over 2.5 billion views. He served as the creative directory for the mobile game Fortress Fury, which has amassed over 2 million downloads.
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About XREAL, Inc.: Building the Future of Competitive Mobile Gaming
Anthony Borquez
Founder & CEO of Grab Games
Anthony is experienced in building and scaling creative tech businesses. His first company he co-founded, Spacient Technologies, was an early mobile GPS software platform that was acquired by Trimble Navigation. Anthony’s prior game company, Blue Label Games, built some of the first mobile gaming technology and content. In 2006, Blue Label Games was acquired by Japanese gaming leader Konami. The acquisition helped enable Konami’s mobile gaming division to become a top worldwide mobile game publisher. Anthony is also a Professor at the University of Southern California, where he teaches courses in Entrepreneurship and Gaming.
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About Faceroll Games, Flightly, Grab Games, University of Southern California, University of Southern California Marshall School of Business: Grab is focused on creating high-quality entertainment content across all major interactive platforms.
Dirk Lueth
Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Upland
Dirk Lueth is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Upland.
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About Upland: Upland is a virtual property trading game mapped to the real world and based on blockchain technology.
Vlad Korolev
CEO & Co-Founder of Gunzilla Games
Vlad Korolev is the CEO and Co-Founder at Gunzilla Games.
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About Gunzilla Games, PLINK: Gunzilla Games is an independent, innovative, and player-focused developer of AAA games.
Jesse Zhang
CEO and Founder of Lowkey
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About Camelot.ai, Lowkey, Lowkey: The home for watching and creating short gaming videos
Benjamin Tse
Co-Founder & CPO of Genopets
Award-winning product designer with 15+ years in UI/UX, Business Strategy, SaaS, E-commerce, and Branding. 6 years in blockchain and crypto-asset platforms. Winner of EOS Global Hackathon in 2018.
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About Genopets, Hundredfold Studios: Genopets is a non-fungible token (NFT) “move-to-earn” game where players are rewarded for the steps they take in real life.
Jay Chang
Co-Founder of Genopets
Product Management and Marketing leader with 10+ years experience. 4 years in blockchain, 3 in product marketing leading the go-to-market for EOS at Block.one prior to joining Google’s P&E dev marketing team.
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About Genopets: Genopets is a non-fungible token (NFT) “move-to-earn” game where players are rewarded for the steps they take in real life.
Albert Chen
Co-Founder & CEO of Genopets
10+ years in growth marketing as owner of multiple e-commerce businesses. 10+ years in software development with 4 years focused in blockchain engineering. Winner of EOS Global Hackathon in 2018.
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About Cocoon Worldwide, Genopets, masklab: Genopets is a non-fungible token (NFT) “move-to-earn” game where players are rewarded for the steps they take in real life.
Eli Brown
Founder of Guilded
Eli Brown is the Founder at Guilded. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Washington State University.
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About Guilded: Guilded helps gaming teams recruit, improve, and complete.
Lucas Pellan
Co-Founder of Z League
Lucas Pellan currently works as Co-Founder at Z League. He was a CSO and Co-Founder of Sonder.
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About Z League: The world’s first skill-based e-sports tournament platform
Paullie Etienne
Founder/COO of Cloud9
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About Cloud9: Cloud9 is a professional multi-game esports organization that is based in the Los Angeles, California area.
Vlad Panchenko
Founder & CEO of DMarket
Volodymyr Panchenko is private merchant of digital games in the world. He is founder of skins.cash — 2nd biggest virtual items marketplace. He is also founder and CEO of Suntechsoft.
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About DMarket, DreamTeam, Suntechsoft: DMarket is a marketplace for NFTs trading and technology for building metaverses.
Jernej Barbic
Co-Founder and CTO of Ziva Dynamics
Jernej Barbic is the co-founder and CTO at Ziva Dynamics.
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About Ziva Dynamics: Ziva Dynamics is a software company that specializes in character creation and human simulation.
Shane Zhu
Founder & CEO of DeHorizon
Shane(Shengjie) Zhu is the Founder and CEO of DeHorizon.
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About Blok Party, DeHorizon: DeHorizon—Cutting a new decentralized horizon
Jeffrey Tong
CEO & Co-Founder of Zelos Gaming
Jeffrey Tong serves as the CEO and founder of Zelos Gaming.
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About Zelos Gaming: Zelos is a cross-game rewards program that enables gamers to earn points by completing in-game tasks and redeem virtual prizes.
Derek Chiang
Co-Founder & CTO of Zelos Gaming
Derek Chiang serves as a co-founder and CTO at Zelos Gaming.
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About Zelos Gaming: Zelos is a cross-game rewards program that enables gamers to earn points by completing in-game tasks and redeem virtual prizes.
David Danglard
Founder of K1 Speed
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About K1 Speed: K1 Speed is an entertainment platform indoor go kart racing.
Susan Danglard
Founder of K1 Speed
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About K1 Speed: K1 Speed is an entertainment platform indoor go kart racing.
Andrew Miller
Founder & CEO of NRG eSports
Andy Miller is the Founder & CEO at NRG Esports.
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About 1Energy Systems, Internet Real Estate Group, NRG eSports, NRG eSports, NRG eSports, Sacramento Kings, Sacramento Kings: NRG eSports is looking to set precedence in the industry of eSports.
Nanea Reeves
CEO and Co-Founder of TRIPP
As CEO of TRIPP, Nanea Reeves brings over 15 years experience in digital distribution, video game technologies and mobile application development. Prior to co-founding TRIPP, Nanea was President & COO of textPlus, one of the top mobile communications applications on the iOS and Android platforms. Before joining textPlus, Nanea was the COO of Machinima, an online video influencer and content network focused on video games now owned by Warner Brothers. Nanea has also served as Chief Strategy and Product Officer at Gaikai, a cloud gaming company acquired by Sony Playstation. Previous to Gaikai, Nanea was SVP/COO of Global Online for Electronic Arts where she was responsible for building the foundation for EA’s digital revenue streams. Nanea came to EA through their acquisition of JAMDAT where she was SVP of Enabling Technologies. JAMDAT was one of the first breakout mobile games company with a successful IPO in 2005 before being acquired by EA in 2006. Nanea is very committed to supporting the evolution of the technology sector in Los Angeles and has worked as an Advisor and Angel Investor in many exciting So-Cal start-ups including Oculus, Haku and Saucey. Nanea is an active mentor and enjoys public speaking having given 3 Tedx talks on various subjects – including one focused on why girls should play video games. An avid meditator, Nanea also spends her free time playing video games, her ukulele and golf. She is also very active in her late husband’s non-profit Bodhicitta, Inc. as well as dedicated to helping women in recovery at the Peggy Albrecht Friendly House.
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About TRIPP: The award-winning digital psychedelic wellness platform that uses the power of virtual and augmented reality to change the way you feel.
Tony Cannon
Founder, CTO of Radiant Entertainment
Tony graduated from Stanford University in 1995 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Before Radiant, Tony spent 11 years leading technical teams at VMware, Microsoft, and VXtreme. On the side, Tony pioneered latency-hiding techniques for peer-to-peer online games. His technology, licensed under the name “GGPO,” is used in many of today’s fighting games.
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About Radiant Entertainment, Riot Games: Radiant Entertainment is an American video game developer that creates networking code software solutions.
Josh Newman
Co-Founder and CTO of Spectrum Labs
A former Software Architect at Salesforce, Josh began his career at a research center of Middlebury College. After transitioning to tech, Josh spent a decade developing scalable data management and distributed systems at Vodori, Syapse, and Krux (acquired by Salesforce). Sales: sales@getspectrum.io | Blog: getspectrum.io/blog
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About Spectrum Labs: Spectrum Labs helps consumer brands recognize and respond to toxic behaviors happening within their online communities.
Justin Davis
Co-Founder & CEO of Spectrum Labs
Currently Spectrum’s Co-Founder & CEO, Justin previously managed and scaled Salesforce’s Data Studio platform as a Product Director. He’s worked for numerous industry stalwarts – including Krux, Adobe, SAS, and Microsoft. Sales: sales@getspectrum.io | Blog: getspectrum.io/blog
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About Spectrum Labs: Spectrum Labs helps consumer brands recognize and respond to toxic behaviors happening within their online communities.
Aber Whitcomb
CTO and Co-Founder of Jam City
Aber Whitcomb is co-founder and CTO of Jam City, where he oversees the software architecture underlying the company’s global gaming and analytics platform. Director and Co-founder at Core Scientific.
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About Core Scientific, i/o Ventures, Jam City: Jam City is a mobile entertainment company, connecting the world through technology, creativity, and play.
Chris DeWolfe
CEO & Co-Founder of Jam City
Chris DeWolfe is co-founder and CEO of Jam City, a global leader in mobile entertainment that provides social gaming experiences for millions of players around the world. Prior to Jam City, Chris co-founded and served as CEO of MySpace, where he popularized social networking and revolutionized the music industry. The site, formed in 2004, became the most visited in the U.S. by 2006 with 90 million members. When Chris left the company in 2009, MySpace had more than 130 million monthly active users around the world. Chris received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2015 and the Producers Guild of America’s Vanguard award in 2009. TIME included him among its 2006 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and Barbara Walters named him one of her 10 Most Fascinating People in 2007. He studied finance at the University of Washington and attended the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, which honored him in 2006 with its Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year award. Chris is an advisor at USC’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and a board member of Uproxx Media Group. He lives in Los Angeles with his family and actively participates in animal rescue operations.
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About Jam City: Jam City is a mobile entertainment company, connecting the world through technology, creativity, and play.
Josh Yguado
President, COO & Co-Founder of Jam City
Josh Yguado is co-founder, COO and President of Jam City, where he oversees the company’s operations, growth strategies and game portfolio – which has repeatedly dominated the top grossing charts of the Apple and Google Play stores. Before launching Jam City, Josh was Vice President at Fox Entertainment, where he helped Fox in its acquisition of MySpace, its creation of Hulu and its launch of new television networks. His career also includes working at MTV Networks and Univision. Among other honors, SoCalTech named Josh one of its top “50 Most Influential People” in Southern California’s technology industry. A board member of The Young Turks, he received his bachelor’s degree and MBA from Harvard University. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.
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About Jam City: Jam City is a mobile entertainment company, connecting the world through technology, creativity, and play.
Ilya Rachman
Co-Founder & CEO of Immix Biopharma
Ilya Rachman is a physician-scientist and clinical faculty at UCLA. He received both his MD and PhD in neuroscience and cell biology from the University of Illinois-Chicago, and his MBA from UCLA Anderson. Previous to Immix, Dr. Rachman founded a clinical research organization that conducted clinical trials on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. He has completed several clinical trials as a Principal Investigator and is a co-inventor of Immix’ platform therapeutic technology.
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About Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Immix Biopharma: Immix Biopharma is a biotech company that develops treatments for cancer and other inflammation-driven diseases.
Armando Kirwin
Co-Founder of Artie
Armando is co-founder of Artie, a platform for next-gen games powered by AI. He is one of the most experienced technologists in the field of interactive entertainment and has worked at the highest levels in both Hollywood and Silicon Valley. He has worked with and for some of biggest media and tech companies in the world.
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About Artie: A Web3 mobile gaming company. Play on social media. No app download needed.
Sumit Gupta
Co-Founder & CEO of Boom.tv
Sumit Gupta is an Advisor at Boom Fantasy and Founder & CEO at Boom.tv. He is a 3x Entrepreneur (multiple exits), Angel Investor and Mentor. Founded 3 companies. Invested in 50+ startups including Discord, G2 eSports, BlockChain Capital, Blockstream, Blockcypher, Filecoin, Wag, Classpass, OpenDoor, HoneyBook, Managed-by-Q, Dishcraft Robotics. Mr. Gupta also runs Piazza eSports Ventures with pa articular focus on investments and incubating startups Infusing tech into eSports and Game Streaming. Investments include Discord, Vulcun/StreamLabs, BitKraft, G2 Esports. Startup Portfolio includes DrDisRespect stream team, Boom.tv, Rolocule Games, Boom Fantasy Previously, He served as a Founder & CEO of Bash Gaming, took the mobile gaming company to annual revenue of $75M, profitable and sold it to GSN for $170M. Previously as founder CEO of BitRhymes Apps, top 10 app developers in social space. Before that, I was part of founding team at Business Signatures that was sold to Entrust for $55M
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About afkVR, Boom.tv: BoomTV is an Esports entertainment platform that provides tools to automate score tracking, streaming, and generating event hubs.
Vijay Koduri
Co-Founder of Sizzle
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About HashCut, Sizzle: Sizzle.gg leverages AI to automatically create gaming highlights from Twitch and YouTube livestreams.
Murali Raju
Co-Founder of Sizzle
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About HashCut, Sizzle: Sizzle.gg leverages AI to automatically create gaming highlights from Twitch and YouTube livestreams.
Jerome Scholler
Co-Founder of Osmo
Jerome Scholler is Co-founder of Osmo, and he is deeply passionate about the intersection of creative design, education and technology. He is a seasoned engineer from the game industry, having previously worked at Lucasarts and Ubisoft and worked on the user interface of Chrome for Android at Google.
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About Osmo: Osmo is an interactive play company bringing harmony between physical and digital.
Pratap Ranade
CEO and Co-Founder of Arena
Pratap Ranade joined Arena as CEO and Co-Founder.
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About Arena: Arena is a software firm that builds active learning systems and techniques like reinforcement learning.
Sharky Laguana
Founder & CEO of Bandago
Sharky Laguana is the CEO/founder of Bandago, a unique van rental company offering passenger vans with Wi-Fi, video screens, game consoles, custom seating and more. The company caters to bands, families, corporations, sports teams, churches, and any group of people looking for comfortable ground travel solutions. He serves on the board of the American Car Rental Association (representing 98% of the car rental industry), is on the advisory board of Perfect Price (price optimization using machine learning), and has invested in and advised several other tech startups. He is the founder, guitarist and co-songwriter for the indie rock band Creeper Lagoon (SPIN magazine’s Best New Artist 1997) which released several critically acclaimed records on Dreamworks in the late 90’s, and recently reunited for a string of sold out shows after an 18 year hiatus. Over the past two years Sharky authored a series of essays (beginning with “How To Make Streaming Royalties Fair(er)” which explored how the methods currently used to calculate streaming royalties are inefficient, and brought attention to an alternative approach that addresses those inefficiencies. The humorous essays went viral, and the subsequent discussions they generated has led to a great deal more writing and research on this topic, and at least one major streaming service (Deezer) deciding to employ these methods.
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About Bandago: Bandago is a passenger van rental company featuring vans with Wi-Fi, LCD screens, game consoles, and customized seating.
Yitao Guan
Co-Founder & CTO of FunPlus
Yitao Guan, Founder and CTO of FunPlus, is a technology enthusiast passionate about social, mobile, cloud and data. Prior to founding FunPlus, he worked as a software architect for more than 15 years with leading technology companies, including IBM and Ask.com, where he was responsible for building worldclass infrastructure accessible from anywhere with the capacity to process hundreds of millions requests every day. Yitao received both a Bachelor and Master of Science degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
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About FunPlus: FunPlus is a leading global developer and publisher of free-to-play mobile games
Adil Virani
Co-Founder of Blitz App
Adil Virani is the Co-Founder at Blitz.
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About Blitz App: Your personal gaming coach for League of Legends, Valorant, CSGO, Fortnite and more— powered by AI and built with professional players.
Andy Dinh
Co-Founder and CEO of Blitz App
Andy Dinh is the founder and CEO at Blitz App.
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About Blitz App, Team SoloMid: Your personal gaming coach for League of Legends, Valorant, CSGO, Fortnite and more— powered by AI and built with professional players.
Harlan Crystal
Founder, CTO of Pocket Gems
Harlan Crystal is the Co-founder and CTO of Pocket Gems, a leading developer of mobile games and entertainment. Harlan oversees the company’s technology initiatives and lead development on WAR DRAGONS, Pocket Gems’ first game with 3D graphics and synchronous multiplayer over mobile networks. Before founding Pocket Gems, Harlan was VP of Engineering at Smartleaf. He has hacked for many stage startups in the computer vision, compilers, embedded-realtime, bioinformatics and financial software.Harlan holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Cornell University.
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About Pocket Gems: Pocket Gems’ mission is to be one of the world’s great creators of innovative interactive entertainment on mobile.
Behrooz Abiri
CTO and Co-Founder of GuRu
A hardware hobbyist and International Physics Olympiad gold medalist – Behrooz has always been an avid inventor. He’s spent his life studying, learning, and exploring emerging technologies. His work at GuRu stems from a wish to share miraculous technology with the world at large. At GuRu, Behrooz is responsible for the ongoing development of core technology and system architecture. Under his leadership, GuRu’s millimeter-wave technology has been developed into an accessible consumer product. Before GuRu, Behrooz helped develop system design and architecture in Caltech’s Space Solar Power Initiative. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech.
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About GuRu: Enables safe, effective and customizable transmission of power over-the-air using proprietary mmWave and Smart RF Lensing technology
Florian Bohn
CEO & Co-Founder of GuRu
Florian has always felt compelled to understand the way the world works. His curiosity moved him to study Electrical Engineering at Caltech (B.S. Cum Laude), to receive an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UC Santa Barbara, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech. At GuRu, Florian is thrilled to be building technology that will enrich people’s lives on a global scale. He is also proud to be building a community of passionate and like-minded engineers at the organization. As a co-founder and CEO at GuRu, Florian brings years of technology experience. At Axiom Microdevices, he helped define and implement high-frequency RF integrated circuits which have shipped more than 400 million units. At Agilent Laboratories (formerly HP Labs) he worked on clock and data recovery circuits as well as novel test and measurement systems. As a Caltech Lead Scientific Researcher, Florian guided engineering and operational aspects of implementing the microwave system at Caltech’s Space Solar Power Initiative.
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About GuRu: Enables safe, effective and customizable transmission of power over-the-air using proprietary mmWave and Smart RF Lensing technology
Amy Wan
Founder and CEO of Bling
Amy Wan, Esq., is CEO of Bling, a bitcoin rewards platform. Previously, she has been a Partner as securities law firms, general counsel at fintech platforms, and founded Bootstrap Legal, a real estate syndication legal document automation platform. She hosts The Law and Blockchain Podcast (a podcast through the American Bar Association) and has authored the Bloomberg Law practice guide to ICOs and Lexis Nexus’ Private Equity practice guide. Amy founded Legal Hackers LA, which programs around the intersection of law and technology; was named one of ten women to watch in legal technology by the American Bar Association Journal in 2014 and one of 18 millennials changing legaltech by law.com in 2018; and was nominated as a Finalist for the Corporate Counsel of the Year Award 2015 by LA Business Journal. Amy has also worked in international regulatory and trade policy at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Transportation. She holds an LL.M. in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a JD from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, and a BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Southern California.
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About Bling, Bootstrap Legal: Bling allows users to earn bitcoin rewards by playing games.
Derek Liu
Founder/CTO of Gaia Online
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About Gaia Online: Gaia Online owns and operates online gaming platforms, and designs, develops, and markets mobile games.
Alex Beliankin
CEO & Founder of Legionfarm
Alex Beliankin is the Chief Executive Officer at LegionFarm Group.
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About Legionfarm: Legionfarm is the metaverse employer for gamers. Our mission: 1 million new jobs in virtual worlds.
James Bower
Founder of Wikipad
James Bower is the president of MasterImage 3D, LLC.
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About Citizens Reserve, SUKU, Wikipad: Wikipad is an Android-powered gaming tablet that has the features of a high quality tablet and is tough enough to take all.
Andrew Lacy
Co-Founder and Director of Azarus
At Zaptravel, reinventing travel search through semantics, content and a commitment to beautiful products. Andrew is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and advisor to startup companies. He is currently based in Europe but commute frequently to the Silicon Valley. He is presently working on Zaptravel, a disruptive personalization travel meta-search business. Zaptravel help people who don’t know when or where they want to go to great travel deals that match their interests and the experiences they want to have. Previously, he has been a Senior Vice-President at the Walt Disney Company responsible for operating their mobile development studios and outsourced development across the world and developing many transformational mobile products for the Group. He was a consultant at McKinsey & Company for 6 years where he consulted clients on technological solution to big data and collaboration challenges and investment and operational issues in the airline industry. Andrew has Law and Economic degrees from the University of Melbourne and an MBA from Stanford Business School. Some special skills: social gaming & mobile monetization, iOS & Android mobile launch, marketing, monetization strategies, building businesses around cloud/redis.
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About Azarus, Zaptravel: Azarus is a new game challenge network that allows Gamers and Streamers to engage with each other in unprecedented ways.
Alexander Casassovici
Co-Founder & CEO of Azarus
Alexander is a serial entrepreneur with a strong experience in the mobile and consumer electronics industry. Based in Paris, France, he holds both a telecommunication engineer degree and an MBA. He created notably : * WaveStorm : wireless security solutions and wireless connected devices (including Meccano/Erector’s Spykee spy robot) * Kamayo : rich media mobile agency sold to Streamezzo group * VR-Wear : virtual reality headsets for the gaming industry Highly business oriented he also acts as a consultant for VCs during due-diligence phases and as a business angel.
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About actvt, Azarus, Diveboard, Mobitrends, Showdown.cc: Azarus is a new game challenge network that allows Gamers and Streamers to engage with each other in unprecedented ways.
Erik Whiteford
Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Azarus
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About Azarus: Azarus is a new game challenge network that allows Gamers and Streamers to engage with each other in unprecedented ways.
Alex Casassovici
Co-Founder and CEO of Azarus
Alex is the founding partner of Bitflare Technologies, a blockchain-focused consulting firm specializing in blockchain architecture & token design. His previous venture, Showdown.cc, revolutioned the way game telemetry is used to build in-game communities. He’s an international speaker to world class events such as GDC.
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About Azarus, Diveboard: Azarus is a new game challenge network that allows Gamers and Streamers to engage with each other in unprecedented ways.
Jeremy Zimmer
Founder of United Talent Agency
Jeremy Zimmer is one of the Hollywood agency’s 6 owners and is a UTA co-founder and managing director. The grandson of legendary Hollywood studio chief Dory Schary began his career at age 19 in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency. After moving to Los Angeles in 1984, he joined ICM and eventually ran both the Motion Picture Literary and Motion Picture Packaging departments. Zimmer was asked to leave ICM for an infamous episode when he told an Industry gathering that the agency profession was engaged in “raping and pillaging”. He became a partner at the Bauer/Benedek Agency, and in 1991 he helped found United Talent Agency through a merger of Bauer/Benedek and Leading Artists Agency. Clients represented by Zimmer include Andrew Adamson, Noah Baumbach, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Christopher Guest, Curtis Hanson, Jimmy Hayward, Anthony Hopkins, Barry Levinson, director-producer Frank Marshall, Peter Morgan, director-producer Brian Robbins, Chris Wedge, as well as verge culture retailer Karmaloop and HiT Entertainment. Zimmer is also involved in United Entertainment Group, the joint venture company formed with advertising veteran Jarrod Moses, which is among the industry’s largest independent branded entertainment and integrated media firms. Zimmer’s official bio credits him with establishing UTA’s Branding, Licensing & Endorsements division as well as UTAOnline and UTA’s Agent Trainee Program.
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About United Talent Agency, UTA Ventures: United Talent Agency is a talent and literary agency representing actors, writers, directors, producers, recording artists and more.
Peter Benedek
Founder of United Talent Agency
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About United Talent Agency: United Talent Agency is a talent and literary agency representing actors, writers, directors, producers, recording artists and more.
Kirin Sinha
CEO & Founder of Illumix
Kirin Sinha, 25, is the founder and CEO of Illumix, a Lightspeed and Maveron backed AR gaming and technology company focused on developing adaptive and immersive experiences for the mobile phone. Previously, she founded SHINE for Girls, a national nonprofit targeted at encouraging middle school girls to pursue the study of mathematics. Not your typical gamer or CEO, Kirin is a Marshall Scholar and holds Masters degrees with honors in mathematics and statistics focused on machine learning, specifically computer vision, from the University of Cambridge and LSE respectively. She received a degree in electrical engineering / computer science and mathematics from MIT, and her MBA from Stanford University.
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About Illumix: Illumix develops augmented reality games.
Guthrie Dolin
Co-Founder of Double Crown Gaming Co.
Guthrie Dolin is a seasoned design executive and a serial entrepreneur. He has founded two award-winning design innovation consultancies and partnered to launch numerous brands/businesses. Currently, Guthrie is consulting and advising early-stage companies on product, design experience and brand strategy. Guthrie also lectures at the Institute of Design at Stanford (the d.school) on branding and design innovation for entrepreneurs.
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About Double Crown Gaming Co.: Purveyors of Friendly Competition
Oded Pelled
CEO & Co-Founder of MindKick
President & Co-Founder of VidCrunch, an ad-tech company specializing in turning static content into engaging and monetizable videos. CEO & Co-Founder of MindKick, a mobile gaming studio specialized in social and competitive skill-based games.
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About MindKick, NovoRoll, VidCrunch: MindKick is a mobile gaming company that launches and operates a portfolio of theme-based gaming communities.
Kwang Won Sok
Founder, CEO of Kong Studios
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About Kong Studios: Kong Studios is a gaming company that designs and develops games with narratives and novel game mechanics.
Jeehyung Lee
Founder of Kong Studios
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About Kong Studios: Kong Studios is a gaming company that designs and develops games with narratives and novel game mechanics.
Joe Martin
Founder and CEO of Snatch
Forensic scientist turned entrepreneur and tech company founder. Joe has used his background in to behavioral psychology to take the unlikely step into brand and mobile marketing to huge effect. His first venture ‘Snatch’ – a mobile marketing platform packaged as augmented reality treasure hunt hit the #1 spot on the UK app stores in 2017 and fast became the #1 customer acquisition platform for the majority of over 200 brand partners thanks to the productization of his deeper level understanding of consumer behaviour that resulted in average offer redemptions of 34% (industry average 2%-5%) across a 9 month test period that accumulated over 1 million active users and resulted in Joe being invited to speak at some of the worlds most prestigious tech and marketing events from SXSW, CES, Founders Forum and Cannes Lion. He now returns with his second venture ‘Tickle’ to once again challenge the stat quo and to once again prove that advertising can and should entertain and reward.
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About Snatch, Tickle Global: Snatch is a computer game development company that provides a radical reinvention of the brand experience.
Bill Gelpi
Founder & CEO of Rocket Games
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About Rocket Games: A great team building great games
Joshua Barrow
Founder & CEO of Game Taco
Founder and CEO of Game Taco, Inc
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About Game Taco: Game Taco is an online skill-based video game tournament destination for cash entry fees and cash prizes.
Sean Fannan
CTO & Co-Founder of Chartboost
Sean Fannan is co-founder and CTO of Chartboost, a technology platform for mobile developers to find new users and monetize their games. Chartboost works with over 32,000 games, serves over 12 billion game sessions per month and has raised $21M from Sequoia Capital and other investors. Prior to Chartboost, Fannan was one of the early employees at Tapulous, that was acquired by Walt Disney in 2010 to become Disney Mobile.
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About Chartboost: Chartboost is one of the largest mobile-games only marketplace to increase revenue and discover new players.
Niko Vuori
Founder & CEO of Drivetime
Founder & CEO Drivetime, co-founder & COO of Rocket Games, product at ToyTalk & BranchOut, GM Zynga Poker, founder & CEO Informifi.
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About Drivetime: Drivetime provides an online platform designed to help users play games while they drive.
Grey Albright
Co-Founder – Lead Writer/Editor of Razzball LLC
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About Razzball LLC: Fantasy Sports Community and Daily Projections
Stephen A. Murphy
Co-Founder & CEO of Boom Entertainment
Stephen A. Murphy is the Co-Founder and CEO at Boom Fantasy. He operates the popular NBC Sports Predictor gaming platform and the award-winning Boom Fantasy real-money platform. Mr. Murphy was the Vice President, Business Development at High 5 Games and Managing Editor of Card Player Media. Stephen graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a bachelor of arts in Political Science.
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About Boom Entertainment: Boom Entertainment is building the future of online gaming technology. We power casinos, sportsbooks, media companies, sports leagues & more
Peter Guber
Co-Executive Chairman & Co-Founder of aXiomatic
Peter Guber is the Chairman & CEO at Mandalay Entertainment Group .
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About aXiomatic, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC), Mandalay Entertainment, University of California, Los Angeles: AXiomatic powers unforgettable eSports experiences through sports and entertainment expertise.
Bruce Stein
Co-Founder ,CEO ,Board Member of aXiomatic & Board member Team Liquid of aXiomatic
Bruce Stein is the Co-Founder ,CEO ,Board Member of aXiomatic & Board member Team Liquid at aXiomatic.
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About aXiomatic, Westridge Consulting: AXiomatic powers unforgettable eSports experiences through sports and entertainment expertise.
Will Deane
Founder & CEO of Rainmaker Games
Will Deane is the Founder & CEO at Rainmaker Games.
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About Rainmaker Games: Rainmaker Games is now offering a new and interesting way to invest in a portfolio of GameFi NFTs that can be used to earn blockchain games.
John Parlet
Owner, Founder of John’s Incredible Pizza Company
John Parlet, began his career in the pizza business with the opening of a simple pizza parlor with a couple of arcade games. With the success of that location, John had an incredible idea: He wanted to create a totally unique experience that combined a made-from-scratch all you can eat buffet with rides, games and attractions! And the kicker.he wanted it all under one roof! So in 1997, John opened the first John’s Incredible Pizza Company in Victorville, California with a 16,000 square foot location. This was soon followed by the opening of nine additional locations that grew bigger and even more incredible! With John’s commitment to serving “good food with a good attitude”, the average John’s is now over 50,000 square feet!
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About John’s Incredible Pizza Company: John’s Incredible Pizza is a chain of restaurants offering pizza and other food items, big screen TVs, themed rooms, games and rides.
Maureen Fan
Co-Founder & CEO of Baobab Studios
CEO & Co-Founder of Baobab Studios.
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About Baobab Studios, Gold House, Producers Guild of America, The World Economic Forum: Baobab Studios is a VR animation company that creates story and character driven cinematic experiences.
Kelly Perdew
Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Moonshots Capital
Co-Founder & Managing General Partner at Moonshots Capital.
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About Moonshots Capital, TargetClose: Seed stage venture capital firm that invests in extraordinary leadership.
Tony Hawk
Founder, CEO of Birdhouse Skateboards
Tony has won numerous awards, including Make-A-Wish’s Favorite Male Athlete, Teen Choice Awards’ Choice Male Athlete and Nickelodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards’ Favorite Male Athlete, beating out such sports icons as Shaquille O’Neal, Tiger Woods, and Kobe Bryant. From video games to skateboards to online media to clothing to world tours, Tony has dominated the Action Sports market with his laid-back style. He is the most recognized Action Sports figure in the world and, according to some marketing surveys, one of the most recognizable athlete of any kind in the United States. Tony regularly appears on television and in films, and hosts a weekly show on Sirius XM. His autobiography, HAWK—Occupation: Skateboarder was a New York Times bestseller and is currently available in paperback. In 2010, Wiley Publishing released How Did I Get Here? The Ascent of an Unlikely CEO. As his income reached a level he never could have imagined, Tony made an effort to give back to the subculture that has given him so much. His Tony Hawk Foundation has donated over $4 million to 525 skatepark projects throughout the United States. The foundation helps finance public skateparks in low-income areas, providing a safe place to skate and helping young skaters from Marathon, Florida, to Sitka, Alaska, build their self-confidence. Skateparks that received financial assistance from the Tony Hawk Foundation currently serve more than 3 million young Americans annually.
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About Birdhouse Skateboards: Birdhouse Skateboards is a skateboard company.
Simon Newstead
CEO and Co-Founder of Frenzoo
Simon Newstead is CO-Founder and CEO of Frenzoo, creator of mobile 3D lifestyle games with it’s Me Girl™ series.
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About Frenzoo: Frenzoo creates 3D fashion and lifestyle games for iOS and Android devices.
Ling Xiao
VP Engineering, Co-Founder of Playdom
Ling founded Playdom as a Stanford PhD candidate in computer science. Before Playdom, Ling puzzled over data anomalies at Google and researched the scalable visual analysis of large datasets at Stanford. Ling has an MS in computer science from Stanford and a BS in electrical engineering from Berkeley—both accomplishments squeezed in between marathon sessions of Counter-Strike. A literal student of the world, Ling lived in Beijing, Shanghai, Toronto and Vienna before moving to the Bay Area to “study” his two favorite things: CS and gaming.
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About GGWP, Green Chef, Playdom: Playdom is an online social network of game developers.
Matthew Adell
Co-Founder and CEO of OnNow.tv
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About MetaPop Inc., OnNow.tv: Discover, Share and Promote Livestreams
Kevin Primat
Founder & CEO of Primed Technologies
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About Primed Technologies: Primed is redefining Conversational AI with the development of a fuzzy, friendly and talkative toy for children.
Russell Fine
Co-Founder & President of Game Play Network
Russell Fine is the Co-Founder & President at b Spot.
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About bet365, Game Play Network: Game Play Network is a real money gaming platform that offers online racing casino for players.
Neil Young
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of N3TWORK
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About N3TWORK: Creating, publishing, and scaling the very best in mobile games.
Alan Yu
Co-Founder of N3TWORK
Alan Yu is a founder of N3TWORK, a creator and publisher of mobile games. He previously founded ngmoco:) which was acquired by DeNA in 2010. Many years ago, Alan was the director of GDC.
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About N3TWORK: Creating, publishing, and scaling the very best in mobile games.
Steve Detwiler
Co-Founder of N3TWORK
Stephen Detwiler is a co-founder of N3TWORK.
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About N3TWORK: Creating, publishing, and scaling the very best in mobile games.
Markus Persson
Founder and Game Developer of Mojang Studios
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About Mojang Studios, Trilogy: Mojang is a Swedish game developer creating independent video games such as Minecraft.
Ron Czerny
Founder & CEO of PlayPhone
Czerny is a veteran entrepreneur who has been at the forefront of games, mobile and social networking for over 18 years. As founder, Chief Executive Officer and board member, Ron Czerny serves as the visionary and driving force behind PlayPhone’s corporate strategy. Czerny’s vast experience in the games industry has allowed him to help establish PlayPhone’s dominance in the mobile social games industry and position the company to compete and thrive on a global scale. In 2000, Czerny founded Atrativa, a online platform and games company with operations based mainly in North and South America. As chief executive officer, Czerny led Atrativa to its current status as the premier Web games provider platform, powering several major ISPs including Earthlink, UOL (South America’s largest ISP), Yahoo!? Brazil, AOL? Brazil, MSN? Brazil, Ibest (Telecom Brazil), Terra Networks (North and South America) and many others. RealNetworks, Inc. acquired Atrativa in 2006. Czerny also played a key role in Latin America’s video game industry between 1992 and 1999 as the co-founder of the Brazilian Video Game Association and Head of Capcom’s video game distribution and strategy in the region.Czerny is currently the Chairman of the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) for North America and a Board Member of MEF Global.Czerny holds a Bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in international business from San Jose State University.
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About PlayPhone: PlayPhone is a social gaming developer providing solutions to wireless carriers.
Aron Beierschmitt
Co-Founder, CEO of Laguna Games
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About Laguna Games: Laguna Games is a research and game development studio that specializes in making blockchain tech.
Patrick Lu
Co-Founder and CEO of Playfull
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About Playfull: Playfull is a rewards platform for gamers and their mission is to make play more fulfilling
Alex Hesselgrave
Co-Founder and CTO of Playfull
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About Playfull: Playfull is a rewards platform for gamers and their mission is to make play more fulfilling
Zhuping Hu
Co-Founder, iOS Developer of Playfull
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About Playfull: Playfull is a rewards platform for gamers and their mission is to make play more fulfilling
JB Lee
CPO & Co-Founder of AmazeVR
JB Lee is a Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at AmazeVR.
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About AmazeVR: AmazeVR is a virtual concert platform for the highest quality VR content creation and mass distribution using the proprietary technologies.
Steve Lee
Co-CEO & Co-Founder of AmazeVR
Steve Lee is a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at AmazeVR.
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About AmazeVR: AmazeVR is a virtual concert platform for the highest quality VR content creation and mass distribution using the proprietary technologies.
Jeremy Nam
CTO & Co-Founder of AmazeVR
Jeremy D. Nam is the CTO and Co-Founder of Amaze VR.
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About AmazeVR: AmazeVR is a virtual concert platform for the highest quality VR content creation and mass distribution using the proprietary technologies.
Phil Stover
Co-Founder and CEO of PvP.com
Phil Stover is the Co-Founder and CEO of PvP.com.
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About PvP.com: The first true gamer social community.
Bree Hanson
Founder of Odin’s Hammer
Bree Hanson is Founder @ Odin’s Hammer.
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About Odin’s Hammer: Odin’s Hammer is a mobile application company specialized in connecting people through social experiences and innovative gaming.
Barry Sandrew
Co-Founder & Chairman of Arival
Barry Sandrew, Ph.D., after leaving his position as staff neuroscientist at Harvard and Mass General Hospital, invented the first all-digital technology and process for colorizing black and white feature films. He subsequently founded American Film Technologies and produced colorized films for Fox Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures, Paramount, Sony, Japan’s Tsuburaya, BBC and several other major global media and distribution companies. He founded Legend Films in 2000 and after being introduced to digital 3D in 2007, Dr. Sandrew created a conversion process and pipeline that eventually became the gold standard of 3D conversion, an accomplishment that stands today. In 2010, following the release of Alice in Wonderland, he changed the name of Legend Films to Legend3D, in order for the company to focus entirely on the stereoscopic conversion of feature films and commercials. Learn more about how Legend3D has become today’s highest-quality producer of 3D conversion in the industry and a key innovator in 3D conversion technology here. To learn more about Dr. Sandrew’s reflections on the growth of 3D,
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About Arival: Arival technology brings your fans into the game like never before, using augmented reality to visualize real-time player data.
