Jon Walsh, CEO
- first game crush: Wolfenstein
Jon Walsh founded Fuse Powered in the fall of 2009 to pursue opportunities in the smart phone game industry. Jon has been in the video game industry for more than 15 years. In 2001 Jon founded Groove Games, a retail game publisher. In less than four years the Company reached an annual revenue of more than $20MM and published more than 20 game titles that that sold over 5 million units combined. The Company also launched a successful Facebook game in partnership with Sports Illustrated and released Marine Sharpshooter for the iPhone in 2009, which reached the number 1 spot in iTunes worldwide with more than 3 million downloads. Prior to starting Groove, Jon was the Canadian Sales Manager of Activision, the world's largest publisher of video games.
Jon received his Honours BA in Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario and his MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.
Yung Wu, Partner & Board Chair
- first game crush: Defender
Yung is a highly successful tech entrepreneur who has led his companies through 50% to 70% year over year growth, attracted over $70 million in external financing from top institutional investors and marquee Silicon-valley based VCs, and led his companies through 2 major economic cycles, 3 business model changes and "perfect storms" in both the technology and financial services sectors, while creating hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions in enterprise value for his shareholders. In 2008, Yung concluded his tenure with the latest company that he founded, by engineering its very successful sale to Oracle. He has received numerous awards including being recognized as one of Canada's 'Top 40 under 40' leaders and for running one of the "50 Best Managed Private Companies" in the nation.
Yung is a graduate of the University of Toronto, a member of MENSA and organizations such as the Institute of Certified Management Consultants (ICMCO) and the Young Presidents Organization (YPO).
Fay Wu, CFO
- first game crush: Pac-man
Fay is the co-founder of NFQ Ventures, a venture accelerator providing smart money backed by deep entrepreneurial and operational expertise to early stage high growth companies. Prior to NFQ, she was EVP and CFO of Castek, a software company which received numerous awards including the "Top Product Launch" and "Top Transformation Company" in the prestigious Branham Awards competitions. Fay raised over $60MM in venture financing for Castek and led the building of the firm's corporate foundations; developing scalable infrastructure, best practices, risk management, and measurement systems. She has spoken at industry conferences on the topics of "How to Build a Scaleable Organization" and "Getting, Keeping and Growing Great People." Prior to this venture, Fay held senior account and portfolio management roles with major US and Canadian financial institutions where she structured large-scale project financing and limited partnership transactions and managed asset portfolios ranging in size from $100MM - $300MM.
Fay has an undergraduate degree in business, holds an MBA from Schulich School of Business, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers (FICB).
Elizabeth Priestman, CMO
- first game crush: Qbert
Elizabeth built her first company at 17, selling it three years later so she could attend University. At 23, she founded a full service marketing company, rapidly expanding into digital marketing. As an early technology adopter, Elizabeth created International websites, web-based loyalty systems, CRM platforms, data-driven marketing programs and integrated campaigns for some of the world's leading brands including; Acura, AIG, Allstate, Bell, Cadbury, Heinz, Honda, Nissan, Rogers, Scotia and Universal Music. As technology evolved, she expanded her company's capabilities into social media, mobile and branded games. She's presented her innovative online marketing approach with the Internet Advertising Bureau, Association of Internet Marketing & Sales, Interactive Multimedia Arts & Technologies Association, Direct Marketing Association and numerous conferences. In 2007, Elizabeth sold the company to PGePROPEL.
Elizabeth is a graduate of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, a mentor with the American Marketing Association's Hall of Legend's Program, a past member of the Young Entrepreneur's Association and recently attended Harvard Business School's Digital Marketing Executive Education Program.
Joel Benton, VP Business Development
- first game crush: Manic Miner
Joel looks after our Developer partners and ensures Fuse is working with the world's leading Development talent. Joel has worked in videogames for over ten years, prior to which he worked in high-value software sales and system integration services. Joel has worked in-house for UK console Developers Wide Games and Kuju Entertainment as Business Development Director responsible for negotiating all development deals within their five wholly owned studios. Joel also worked as part of the European team of Digital Development Management, a leading videogame talent agency representing top studios all around the world. Joel knows everyone within videogames (or certainly appears to) and helps keep Fuse growing as a unique publishing resource for the best mobile game creators.
Gary Kosinsky, Director of Technology
- first game crush: Parsec
Gary leads all technical development. His current primary initiative is the Fuseboxx, our proprietary analytics library and dashboard technology, which are a key strategic advantage and competitive differentiator for the Company. Gary also has extensive game development experience and oversees all external development projects from a technical perspective.
Gary is a Queen's engineer with a broad range of programming and technical design experience.
Darren Keyes, Director of Business Intelligence
- first game crush: Pong L
Darren has been working in the online gaming space since 2007 when he joined AdGames Network as their VP Operations. AdGames focused on monetizing free players in the iGaming space with advertising. Most recently, Darren has acted as Operations Manager for Full Tilt Poker Academy and Acting Director of Business Intelligence for the True Poker Network, home to Doyle's Room. Prior to his online gaming career, Darren worked in the finance industry as Director of Quantitative Research for Last Atlantis Capital Management LLC. With his unique blend of experiences in science, quantitative finance and iGaming, Darren has developed exceptional analytical and problem solving skills. In addition to consulting in the poker space, Darren is an accomplished poker player who has amassed over $400,000 in live and online tournament winnings. He also writes a monthly poker strategy column for WPT Magazine.
Darren holds an MSc in Physics from the University of Toronto.
Ben Huxley, Director of Product
- first game crush: The Legend of Zelda
Ben is responsible for the overall day-to-day operations of the Company, including all game platform monitoring and security, corporate infrastructure requirements, and for management of the overall game portfolio pipeline and integration of the game content into the game platform. He also oversees all game platform scaling initiatives and testing and prototyping of the game platform. Ben has spent more than 7 years in the game publishing industry, working on publishing Xbox, PC and PlayStation, online and mobile games, including Facebook, MySpace and iPhone games. Ben also has extensive experience in the advertising industry, working as Director of Technology for 2 major advertising agencies where he coordinated and launched highly successful global digital marketing campaigns for brands such as Budweiser, Acura, Quaker, and SunChips.
Rob Sandberg, Senior Producer
- first game crush: Star Trek (on a PDP-10 timesharing computer)
Rob produces all content for the Company portfolio. Rob ensures all games are on time, on budget and of the highest quality. Rob also manages all developer partner relationships. Rob is a 15-year game production veteran that has worked on landmark game franchises including Command and Conquer, Tiger Woods Golf, UFC and World Championship Poker.