Locations:
Min Investment:
Max Investment:
Target Investment:
2024
2024
Advisor to a handful of interesting companies.
2023
2023
My personal vehicle for equity and debt investing in opportunities with aligned values.
2013 - 2023
2013 - 2023
Acquired by Epic Games in 2020. SuperAwesome is the operating system for the under-13 Internet. Our technology powers safe digital engagement with young audiences, ensuring their privacy around the world. SuperAwesome's kidtech platform enables billions of digital transactions every month across kid-safe advertising, community and parental consent. The world's top developers, brands and content owners use SuperAwesome to make sure they're compliantly supporting the fastest growing audience on the internet. Headquartered in London, the company has offices in New York, LA and Chicago.
2015 - 2020
2015 - 2020
TotallyAwesome is the leading kid-safe digital ad platform in Southeast Asia and Australia.
2013 - 2020
2013 - 2020
Potato was founded in 2010 by veteran developer Jason Cartwright and long-time business partner Luke Guttridge. Focussing on the development of complex, scalable web applications, Potato work often sits at the heart of influential marketing campaigns. Clients include Google, YouTube, News International, PayPal and other agencies such as BBH and Mother. Headquartered in London, Potato also maintains offices in Bristol and presences in San Francisco and Sydney. The company was acquired by WPP's AKQA in 2016.
2013 - 2015
2013 - 2015
Brown Bag Films® are Europe’s most successful creative-led animation studio. Since 1994, their Dublin-based headquarters have produced cutting-edge animation for the international market, bagging numerous awards along the way. These include two Oscar® nominations for Give Up Yer Aul Sins (2002), Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty (2010) and Bafta and Emmy nominations for Octonauts. Brown Bag Films' much-loved TV shows are viewed by millions of children worldwide and include Olivia, Noddy in Toyland, Doc McStuffins, Henry Hugglemonster, Peter Rabbit and the aforementioned Octonauts. With a second office in LA, Brown Bag Films are committed to producing the highest-quality, cross-platform animation with strong stories and engaging characters. Founded and managed by animators Cathal Gaffney and Darragh O’Connell, Brown Bag Films is one of Ireland’s business success stories employing over 130 full time staff. Brown Bag’s Smithfield HQ is a place where state-of-the-art technology meets native Irish artistry and wit. The studio is among the most technically-advanced in the world, with full animation, picture and audio post-production facilities in house. Their motto is simple: “We love animation”. In fact, they love it so much they trademarked it. ‘We Love Animation™.’
2011 - 2012
2011 - 2012
Fight My Monster is one of the fastest growing online games for boys aged 8-12yrs in the UK and US. Free to play from any Internet browser, the game is quickly becoming the online destination for schoolboys everywhere. Investors include Greycroft Partners (Klout, Buddy Media, Maker Studios), eVenture Capital Partners (Groupon, Angie’s List, Sonos) and several well known angel investors from the west coast. The company has offices in San Francisco and London. You can read more about Fight My Monster on PandoDaily (http://bit.ly/wmzuYO), TechCrunch (http://tcrn.ch/L0itZb) and The Guardian (http://bit.ly/qTSFfK) or on the company blog (corp.fightmymonster.com).
2011 - 2012
2011 - 2012
I served as advisor to the board and executive team at Eason (www.easons.com), the largest book and stationery retailer in Ireland, on matters relating to their online strategy.
2008 - 2011
2008 - 2011
Jolt Online Gaming (www.joltonline.com) is one of Europe’s leading developer-publishers of social games on browser, Facebook and iPhone. Key achievements included: -Rapidly grew the company via organic growth and several studio acquisitions with operations in UK, US, Bulgaria and Germany and parallel game development capacity. -Managed several different game revenue models including advertising, free-to-play and subscription. -Completed due diligence on approximately thirty companies in the online games space (social and browser) while assessing opportunities to grow the company. -Pioneered the brand licensing model in the social games space, closing deals with MGM, Activision, Playboy, Eidos and Warner Bros, who had never entered this space previously. -Successfully developed and launched a range of social games including Legends of Zork, Playboy Party, Utopia Kingdoms and Championship Manager: Rivals which entertained millions of players across Europe and the US. While raising a Series B investment round in November 2008, the company was acquired by GameStop (the largest video games retailer in the world) to spearhead their digital media strategy. I led the Jolt-side of the transaction with our legal partners. Post-acquisition, my achievements included: -Managed and grew the world’s first social retail games operation from Europe which reported to the executive team in the US. -Led the creation of integrated retail-to-online game acquisition engine (fully integrated retail POS with social game registration and analytics) providing detailed analytics on player registration, activity and revenue generation on a per-store basis. To date, this is the only such system in the world and dramatically lowered the CPA for online games by up to 75%.
2003 - 2007
2003 - 2007
Prior to its acquisition, DemonWare (www.demonware.net) was the leading online gaming technology company in the global console games industry. DemonWare was widely recognized as a material contributor to over $2Bn in revenue generated by titles such as Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Smackdown and over fifty other AAA games. My achievements included: -Despite being the last entrant into the market, created and executed a business and technology strategy which successfully ousted the incumbent market gorilla (backed by News Corp) and led us to become the number one player in the space within three years. -Assembled a team of highly experienced network engineers from around the world. DemonWare’s technology was rated so highly by game developers that it was used in two thirds of all launch titles on PlayStation 3 rather than Sony’s own solution. -Negotiated detailed technical licenses with all major console games publishers including Ubisoft, THQ, Activision, Codemasters, Sega and others. -Led continual integration and negotiation (technical and commercial) with Microsoft and Sony as they modified their console SDKs across two generations of console and handheld devices. -Spearhead the design of the first data-mining product in the console industry which led to a complete overhaul of the console game production process in several publishers. -Established offices in Dublin, Los Angeles and Vancouver and created a highly responsive customer support network for our clients in Europe, North America and Asia. -Led the company in M&A discussions with several buyers that ultimately resulted in an acquisition by Activision Blizzard. Since its acquisition in 2007, DemonWare has expanded further and become the bedrock of Activision’s Central Technology (Online) group and powering record-breaking games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops.