Johnny Monsarrat, CEO
In 1994, Johnny founded Turbine, the first company to begin work building Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMOs), an industry that now earns $43 billion per year. Turbine won “Game of the Year” DICE awards (the “Oscars” of the videogame industry) with hit games Asheron’s Call and Lord of the Rings Online, and was acquired by Warner Brothers for $160 million.
He is an Ivy League award-winning public speaker and Guinness World Record holder with an MIT Sloan MBA. Advisor Jack Tretton, the former President of Sony’s PlayStation division, says, “Johnny is the best communicator and most ‘can-do’ guy that I work with.”
Johnny is also an internationally award-winning artificial intelligence expert from the MIT AI Lab, MIT Media Lab, Harvard, and Brown University, who helped build the world’s first juggling robot and was the first person to drive a robot remotely using the Internet. Johnny’s thesis advisor was Professor Rodney Brooks, Chairman of the MIT AI Lab and founder of iRobot, which makes the Roomba vacuum cleaner robot.
Artur Dębkowski, VP Engineering
Artur Dębkowski has more than a decade of experience building the next generation of technologies, leading development at some of Poland’s largest video game companies. Most recently he was Lead Game Programmer, Lead DevOps, and Producer at Unseen Silence. Before that he led prototypes and DevOps at Vile Monarch.
Previously, he worked as a full stack .NET developer on web applications and native Android apps at Samsung and elsewhere. He studied at Gamedev School and at the Warsaw University of Technology. Today he is an occasional lecturer at the Warsaw Film School, teaching Unity C# game programming and game development, and he’s a mentor and speaker at KNTG Polygon at the Warsaw University of Technology.
Brian Sullivan, Chief Creative Officer
Brian Sullivan is an award-winning game designer and serial entrepreneur. He has cofounded two game companies and co-created Age of Empires, the $1B Microsoft game franchise, and Titan Quest. His games have sold over 25 million copies worldwide and have won countless industry awards.
He has also helped develop the game program at Northeastern University, including teaching game design courses. Previous to working in the games industry, Brian was an IT consultant for over a dozen years. He is a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University.
David Anderman, Advisor
David Anderman is a seasoned executive in technology, media, and consumer products, and former General Counsel of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, who assisted their 2020 raise of $1.9B.
He previously spent 16 years at Lucasfilm Ltd., George Lucas’s entertainment empire, where as COO he was responsible for the day-to-day business of all subsidiaries.
In 2012, he negotiated the $4 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney, earning the Variety Dealmaker of the Year Award. He also negotiated deals including:
- First ever presentation of a feature film via digital cinema for Star Wars: Epsiode I
- First satellite distribution of a theatrical release for Star Wars: Episode II
- First user generated fan video site for a major film property, StarWars.com
- Long term license agreements with Hasbro, LEGO, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Sony Online and others, as well hundreds of merchandise and promotional licenses in over 100 countries for Star Wars and Indiana Jones
- Digital, theatrical, and home video distribution agreements with Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., Apple, and Yahoo!
In between, he was Chief Business Officer and General Counsel for Jaunt, the AR/VR platform acquired by Verizon, helping raise $125M from Disney, CAA, China Media Capital, and others.
Stephen Saltzman, Advisor
Stephen Saltzman was previously Managing Director for Intel Capital for 16 years, specializing in AR/VR, video games, and esports.
Previously, he helped Intel’s PC Enhancement Operation grow from $6M/year to over $250M/year in 3 years. Then he co-founded Now Software, which became the largest Macintosh-only software publisher in the world. Then he was founder and General Manager of Intel’s Wi-Fi division. Stephen is a former Inc. Magazine-Ernst & Young Software Entrepreneur of the Year finalist and a former Oregon High-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year finalist. His investment portfolio exits include 3eTI (EF Johnson), AeroScout (Stanley Black & Decker), AirMagnet (Danaher), EETI (Taiwan Exchange IPO: 3556), InVisage (Apple), IPass (Nasdaq IPO: IPAS), Jajah (Telefonica) RapidBridge (Qualcomm), SyChip (Murata) and Vocera (Nasdaq IPO: VCRA).
Jake Hawley, Advisor (Games)
Jacob Hawley was previously, for 7 years, Worldwide Director of Technology for 2K Publishing at Take-Two Interactive, one of the world’s top 10 videogame companies. There he had P&L responsibility for $40M+ annual for core technology and tech roadmap for all of the global development studios. He successfully delivered 21 AAA titles, including Bioshock and Borderlands, which generated over $5B in revenue.
He was also Senior Director of Technology and Business Development at Intellectual Ventures, where he received multiple President’s Club awards for top sales and licensing revenue, and COO of Blind Squirrel Entertainment, where he delivered 6 of the top 10 Steam Games of 2016. Most recently, he founded and built TLM Partners, a technology outsourcing company whose customers include 2K Games, R* Games, EA, Warner Bros, Skydance, Starbreeze, Nomadic VR, and RedPill VR. He has a BS from MIT.
Dave Lorenzini, Advisor (AR, mapping)
Dave Lorenzini is a global leader in AR and spatial computing, and on the board that manages Augmented World Expo, the world’s biggest augmented reality conference. He co-created Google Earth as Director of Keyhole.
Previously, at ARc, he led XR product, platform and business strategy work for clients including Google and Facebook. He was an executive in satellite imaging at Maxar, and co-founded Open AR Cloud Association, the leading spatial computing industry effort creating open and interoperable reality based systems. He is also now Director of Visualix (deep AR positioning).
Craig Kornblau, Advisor (Hollywood)
Craig Kornblau built his media career at NBC Universal and Disney, where he spearheaded projects around transformative technology and delivery, and is now principal of a strategic consulting firm.
Craig was President of Universal Studios Home Entertainment for 15 years, where he oversaw sales, marketing, distribution, and finance for Universal’s North American home entertainment operations. A critical function of this position was his participation on the studio’s theatrical greenlight committee. Prior to Universal, Craig was an executive at Buena Vista Home Video, now Walt Disney Home Entertainment. He is GV’s (formerly known as Google Ventures) first advisor from the media and entertainment sector, and he serves on the board of directors of a variety of companies in the media and tech space.
He has a broad network of consumer and retail partners including Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, Comcast, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Target and Walmart. Craig has previously held board positions with the Consumer Electronics Association, Digital Entertainment Group, Media Audits International, and Next Level Communications. Craig earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.
Kate Edwards, Advisor (Mapping)
Kate Edwards has 30+ years’ experience as a private sector geographer, cartographer, and geopolitical and cultural strategist. She pioneered the field of digital content “culturalization” to identify geopolitical and cultural risks and opportunities in corporate products and services, first as Microsoft’s head geopolitical strategist and now as an independent consultant at her company, Geogrify.
She was Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association from 2012 to 2017, and now is Executive Director of the Global Game Jam. During her time at Microsoft and since, she’s worked on many game franchises, including Halo, Fable, Age of Empires, Dragon Age, Modern Warfare, Mass Effect and many others. She’s also the founder of the IGDA’s Localization SIG and co-organizer of the former Localization Summit at GDC. Kate has been a columnist for MultiLingual Computing magazine since 2005.
Craig Alexander, Advisor (Games)
Craig is the Senior Vice President of Production & Digital Studio for Global Product at Pearson, the world’s largest education company, with over 35,000 employees in more than 70 countries. There he is accountable for the successful end-to-end production of Higher Education courseware across all formats and product models including print, eText, rich media, current generation supplemental, and next generation digital including AR/VR, as well as oversight of Pearson rights & permissions, and global content solutions.
Previously, he managed videogames for more than 20 years as Vice President of Product Development at Warner Brothers / Turbine, Vice President and General Manager at Activision, Vice President of Production at Electronic Arts, and General Manager at Sierra Online.
Eric Hartness, Advisor (Esports)
Eric Hartness is a partner at Fog Break Ventures, consulting in esports, research, and marketing, with clients including VGM, GameChangerSF, ReKTGlobal, and Greenlit Content.
He was previously VP Marketing at BANDAI NAMCO, Head of Marketing for Amazon Game Studios, and Vice President of Marketing for nine years at Electronic Arts. Eric has over 30 years of global marketing experience in entertainment and technology. He earned a BSBA from the University of Arkansas and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
