Team
Co-Founders: Romain and Mathieu Nouzareth
Two web entrepreneurs, Mathieu and Romain started their career at respectively, 23 and 20 years old, by co-founding WebConcept, one of the first e-business consulting company in France in 1995. WebConcept was later sold to IconMedialab of Sweden in 1999, still today one of the largest internet consultancy company in the world (NYSE-Euronext : LBI).
The brothers became subsequently President and CEO of IconMedialab France until 2001. In 2001, they decided to start Boonty.com, which quickly became one of the leading game digital distribution company in the world. Operating in more than 30 countries with over 180 co-workers in New-York, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and Beijing, the company has been sold to Nexway of France in 2008. They also founded cafe.com in 2006, a leading social casual game web site and social network game publisher pioneering the micro-transactions model. Cafe.com went public on the NYSE-Alternext market in June 2010.
Mathieu and Romain have now started another game company, FreshPlanet, based in New York.
Their goal: Make fun games for smart people.
Chief Design Officers: Naomi Clark and Eric Zimmerman
Eric Zimmerman is a pioneering, award-winning game designer who has worked in the game industry for 16 years. For nine years, Eric was the Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer of Gamelab, a game development company based in New York City. Gamelab’s award-winning games include the casual game blockbuster hit Diner Dash. Founded in 2000, Gamelab created innovative games for broad audiences, including singleplayer and multiplayer online games, as well as games in other media both on and off the computer. Gamelab worked with partners including LEGO, HBO, VH-1, Nickelodeon, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Disney, Mattel, PlayFirst, PBS, Fisher-Price, Leapfrog, and many others.
Gamelab helped create two companies: Gamestar Mechanic, an online site that was funded by the MacArthur Foundation that lets kids create games, and the Institute of Play, a nonprofit that looks at the intersection of games and learning and is currently launching a school in New York City based on play as the model for learning. Eric’s prior work includes the critically acclaimed SiSSYFiGHT 2000, Gearheads, and The Robot Club. Eric is the co-author with Katie Salen of Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals and the co-editor with Katie Salen of The Game Design Reader (MIT Press, 2006). Eric has taught courses at MIT, NYU, Parsons School of Design, and School of Visual Arts. He has exhibited game artworks at museums and galleries in the US and abroad.
Naomi Clark has been designing and producing digital games and virtual worlds for nearly twenty years, from an early start building online games as a teenager. She has grown and managed many online communities, from a dial-up BBS to the vibrant community surrounding a seminal multiplayer web game, Sissyfight 2000. After serving as one of the editors of the landmark content site Word, Naomi went on to produce and architect websites, software toys, and online games for LEGO, including the online community for LEGO Mindstorms, the multiplayer Drome Racing Challenge, and the LEGO Digital Designer software for building with virtual bricks. She continues to advise LEGO’s in-house game studio on their strategy for web and mobile games.
In the last decade, Naomi has collaborated on the design a wide variety of educational and commercial titles at game studios such as Gamelab, Blue Fang, and Rebel Monkey. These projects included Miss Management, the Jojo’s Fashion Show series, the Facebook game Zoo Kingdom and Gamestar Mechanic, a project funded by the MacArthur Foundation that lets kids create games. She has also taught a course on the sociology of online games for Parsons School of Design as well public workshops on game design for the New York City game development community. At various points in her career, Naomi has consulted and developed concepts for clients and publishers including PBS, Disney, Fisher Price, Wizards of the Coast, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Major League Baseball and JMH Education.
Investors
SoftTech VC is an early stage venture capital firm managing a $15M seed stage fund, SoftTech VC II. Jeff Clavier, one of the most active Web 2.0 early stage investors – often dubbed a “super angel” or “micro-cap VC”, announced the fund and its four initial investments, at the TechCrunch40 conference in September 2007. SoftTech VC II is backed by a mix of institutional and private investors. In its 30 months of activity, the fund has invested in 40+ companies, most of them still operating in stealth/pre-launch mode.www.softtechvc.com
Kima Ventures is the fund created by Jeremie Berrebi, a serial entrepreneur and Xavier Niel, the founder and CEO of Free.fr, one of the largest ISP in France and one of the most famous CEO/billionaire in France.www.kimaventures.com/home.html
CapISF is an investment holding company based in Paris. The fund has been created by VC professionals. www.capisf.com
Other Business angels include Jacques-Antoine Granjon and Ilan Benhaim, two founders of Ventes-Privees.com, one of the largest and most successful European start-up. It also includes Pierre Gerard and Laurent Kratz, the two founders of Jamendo.