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PlaySpan™ is the global leader in monetization solutions for more than 1,000 online games, social networks, and online videos. PlaySpan's patent-pending in-game digital goods commerce and micropayment platform enables publishers and developers to generate new revenues, acquire new users, and extend the loyalty of existing users.
PlaySpan provides a global payments platform through its UltimatePay. product which enables users to make safe, convenient, and friendly in-app purchases using over 85 global payment methods in 180 countries. UltimatePay includes PlaySpan's ULTIMATE GAME CARD®, the #1 selling multi-game pre-paid card, available in over 50,000 retail locations across North America and a growing list of countries worldwide.
PlaySpan is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Ohio, Virginia, and Mumbai. Investors include Easton Capital, Menlo Ventures, STIC and Novel TMT Ventures. The company was honored as one of the 2010 OnMedia Top 100, AlwaysOn Global 250, and won the 2009 OnHollywood Category Award for Best Company in Gaming Category.
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Easton Capital Group
Easton Capital Group (Easton) is a venture capital firm that invests in diversified growth capital and life science opportunities through its three
funds, Easton Capital Partners, L.P., Easton Hunt Capital Partners, L.P. and Easton Hunt New York LP. Easton's investment in PlaySpan Inc.
builds upon Easton's focus on leading businesses offering innovative value-added services to the video game industry. Easton is also a lead investor in IGA Worldwide, the largest in-game advertising company with a proprietary ad serving network. Other industry focuses include new media, clean technology, consumer products and life science. Easton's partners have more than 180 years' experience in venture capital, having managed more than $1.5 billion in assets. Easton has offices in New York and Florida. For more information, visit www.eastoncapital.com.
Menlo Ventures
Menlo Ventures has spent the past 32 years investing in entrepreneurs that Think Big. With nearly $4 billion in capital and hundreds of years of collective venture and technology management experience, Menlo brings the resources and expertise necessary to help see the most ambitious visions through to success. Investments span the entire information technology landscape with stage ranging from seed to pre-IPO. Representative investments include Cavium Networks, Acme Packet, IronPort (Cisco), 3Par Data, F5 Networks, Hotmail, MobiTV, TeleNav, PlayPhone, and IMVU. For more information, please visit www.menloventures.com.
STIC International
With offices in Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Palo Alto, California, STIC International is the global investment arm of STIC Investments, Inc, one of South Korea’s leading venture capital and private equity financial groups. With over $750 million under management, STIC is one of the largest venture capital investors in Korea, targeting companies with the potential to dominate markets with revolutionary technology, products, or unique business models. STIC and its affiliates leverage their extensive networks in both Korea and the rest of Asia to provide capital, technological expertise, marketing and partnership opportunities to emerging growth companies. For more information, please visit www.sticinternational.com.
Novel TMT Ventures
Novel TMT Ventures Limited is the technology, media and telecom investment arm of Hong Kong based Novel Group. Novel TMT, with approximately US$70 million under management, invests in both public and private TMT companies on a direct as well as indirect basis. Its investment strategy focuses on consumer technology companies and the video gaming sector. Investments are concentrated in the United States and China.
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Karl Mehta
Founder & CEO
Karl Mehta is Founder & CEO of PlaySpan, Inc, a leader in monetization platform development for online games, social networks and new media. Karl brings more than 18 years of experience to PlaySpan in founding, building and funding technology start-ups in the U.S. and international markets. Prior to founding PlaySpan, Karl was part of the founding team at MobileAria Inc. (acquired by Wireless Matrix) based in Mountain View and co-founder/ CEO of OmniLabs Inc., based in Singapore and India. Prior to that, he held executive positions at Hughes, leading new business and technology development. Karl won the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year 2010’ Award from Ernst & Young for Northern California and is a Charter member of TiE-Silicon Valley and a board member of Ecosystem Ventures.
Eric Hartness
Chief Marketing Officer
Eric Hartness, Chief Marketing Officer, leads PlaySpan’s Marketplace and microtransaction platform marketing efforts. Eric joined PlaySpan after almost nine years with
Arts where he was most recently Vice President of Marketing for its Redwood Shores studio and hit games Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Simpsons Game, The Godfather, and Dead Space. Previously, Eric led EA’s digital distribution and subscription businesses developing new online revenue streams and maximizing existing ones.
Prior to joining EA, Eric worked as a consultant with Acxiom and A.T. Kearney, where he developed CRM strategies for The GM Card, OnStar, GM Canada, and Sears. Eric also held marketing positions with R.L. Polk, Entergy, and Mattel.
Eric received a BSBA from the University of Arkansas, Magna Cum Laude, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Andrew Magruder
CTO, Payment Business
Andrew Magruder brings over 20 years of game industry experience to PlaySpan as CTO. Andrew has been involved exclusively in developing payment solutions since 2004 and has over 15 years of experience in games and simulation with companies such as Electronic Arts, LucasArts, NASA and Kesmai Corp. He joined Kesmai Corporation in 1998. When Kesmai was acquired by EA (NASDAQ; ERTS), Andrew became Chief Architect of Electronic Arts’ online group, EA.com. He was responsible for the platform technologies for all online EA games. He led the technical developmentof and launched the EA.com game portal, a platform that incorporated the AOL Games Channel and provided over 80 games to 6 million users a month. Andrew left EA to join LucasArts to work on an unannounced Star Wars game, and supported the development of Full Throttle and Star Wars: Galaxies.
He started his career with NASA working on flight software and transitioned into US Military information systems. The combination of skills necessary to develop software on which human lives rely, under stringent security requirements, served him well as he helped the US Military transition from mainframes to Internet-based technologies throughout the European, African and Middle Eastern theaters..
Lex Bayer
GM Payments Business
Lex Bayer is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has led product development at a series of early stage high-tech startups across multiple industries for the last 10 years. Prior to joining PlaySpan, Lex was the CEO and co-founder of Spare Change Payments, the leading payment platform designed specifically for social networks and one of the first players to evangelize the microtransaction model on the social networks. Available on Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace, Spare Change has processed millions of payment transactions since its launch in February 2008 and is utilized on over 700 third party applications as a means to monetize virtual goods. Prior to Spare Change, Lex served as the VP of Product &Technology at Avantis Medical, a medical imaging company, where he established and led the engineering team.
Lex received both an MS and BS degrees in engineering from Stanford University.
Stevana Case
Vice President of Sales
Stevana Case comes to PlaySpan on the heels of storied 15 year career in interactive entertainment. Case began her career as the world's first female professional gamer, touring the globe playing video games competitively. Her penchant for games led her into development, working on creative and product development for titles from casual to hardcore on PC and mobile platforms. After co-founding one of the first dedicated mobile game development studios in North America, she helped establish the mobile entertainment business at Warner Bros. Along the way, Case was named one of "20 Under 30 Women to Watch in Business" by Working Woman Magazine and as one of the "Next Game Gods" by PC Gamer. In recent years, Case has served as a Business Development executive specializing in Software as a Service, microtransactions, and virtual economies -- selling technology and solutions to some of the biggest publishers in interactive entertainment.
Simon Ru
Director of Product / Marketplace Business
Simon Ru joined PlaySpan from Spare Change, where he was the co-founder and the VP of Product and Technology. While at Spare Change, Simon architected and brought to market a micro-payment platform that processed over 30 million transactions in its first year and is used by millions of users across major social networks. Simon's experience spans enterprise software, ecommerce, and electronic payments. Prior to Spare Change, Simon spent five plus years at EBay & PayPal, where he held senior product management positions. He was responsible for integrating top 100 e-tailers with PayPal and later drove product marketing for PayPal's emerging markets division.
Simon received his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley and is a MBA candidate at the Haas School of Business.
Mark Rose
Director of Product / Payments and Platform
Mark leads PlaySpan's Payments and Platform Product management team. Mark joined PlaySpan after co-founding Spare Change - the first and largest micropayments solution on social networks - which was acquired by PlaySpan. Mark has over 15 years experience in product management and consumer financial services including PayPal, E*TRADE, Yodlee and HedgeStreet. Mark is a consumer experience zealot, drives decision making from analytics, and loves inventing new user experiences..
Mark received his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Davis and his MBA from the Sid Craig School of Business.
Julie Whitehead
CFO, Payment Business
Finance Controller, PlaySpan Inc.
Julie Whitehead brings over 15 years of experience to PlaySpan as Finance Controller and CFO. Julie has been involved in payments solutions since 2006. Prior to PlaySpan, Julie was the Corporate Controller at Multi-Color Corporation (NASDAQ: LABL) for 6 years and helped the company grow from $50 million in sales to approx. $200 million in sales. She was responsible for all internal and external (SEC) financial reporting. She took the company through 7 acquisitions, from negotiating the deals through integration of the companies with Multi-Color.
She spent 10 years with the international accounting firm, Grant Thornton. With Grant Thornton, Julie focused on completing audits for mid-market manufacturing and other service orientated companies, with a concentration on public companies (completing SEC filings, IPO’s and secondary offerings). In addition to audit work, Julie was involved with the firm’s internal quality review process of various Grant Thornton offices spread across the United States. Julie graduated from Xavier University with a BSBA in Accounting.
Gus Perez
Director of Business Development & Sales
Gus Perez is an active leader in the International and domestic payment industry with over 16 years experience. Prior to joining PlaySpan, Gus was Vice President eCommerce Solutions at Click & Buy for two years. Prior to that Gus worked as a Strategic Market Consultant at CyberSource for one year and as Sr. Director of Sales Operations at PaymentOne for 10 years. His clients included United Online, Verizon, McAfee, Hi5, Trymedia, IMVU, K2 Network and many of the top MMOG's and MMRPG's. His enterprise accounts have generated over $22 million dollars in combined revenue for his various payment platforms. Before his payment experience, Mr. Perez was a stock broker for six years and generated and managed a portfolio of $16 million. Mr. Perez holds a Bachelor of Science, Business Administration-Finance, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA.
Kevin Higgins
Advisor
Kevin Higgins brings over 20 years of game industry experience to PlaySpan as President of the payment business unit, PayByCash, which he conceptualized and helped found in 1998. Kevin has been President and CEO of PayByCash since 2001. Prior to PayByCash, Kevin Higgins was Vice-President, Customer Support, for Kesmai Corporation in 1997 and served in that role until they were acquired by Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS). While with Electronic Arts (EA), Kevin served as Director, Customer Support Tools and Technologies to design and deploy EA’s integrated, cost-effective, game and community support platform for multiple online services, including the EA.com Web site, which was one of the most highly trafficked sites on the Web.
As President and CEO of Internet Payment Solutions, Inc. (PayByCash), the company sustained year-over-year growth averaging in excess of 100%. PayByCash’s 3-year growth at the end of 2006 was 351%, which placed PayByCash as the 49th fastest growing, privately held financial services company in the US by Inc Magazine. PayByCash’s 3-year growth at the end of 2007 was 527%, all under a ‘bootstrap’ financial model.
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