Mitch Lasky | |
|---|---|
 Lasky in 2013 | |
| Born | Mitchell Harold Lasky [1] January 18, 1962 |
| Alma mater | Harvard College, University of Virginia School of Law |
| Occupation | Venture Capitalist |
| Employer | General Partner at Benchmark |
| Spouse | Cecilia Barajas (m. 1987) |
| Children | 2, including Quadeca |
Mitchell Harold "Mitch" Lasky (born January 18, 1962) is a general partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Benchmark and a former entrepreneur and video game executive.
Lasky received a B.A. degree in History and Literature from Harvard College and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. [3]
Early in his career, Lasky practiced law at the Los Angeles firm Irell & Manella, where he worked on various technology-related intellectual property cases. [4] In 1993, he joined the Walt Disney Company. [5] He left Disney in 1994 to launch a massively multiplayer online game company, Serum Entertainment Software. [3]
Lasky subsequently spent five years at video game publisher Activision, including a stint as executive vice president of Worldwide Studios, [6] helping to launch Quake 3 , Tony Hawk's Pro Skater , and Spider-Man .
In 2000, [7] he joined mobile games company JAMDAT as CEO [8] and took the company public in 2004.[ citation needed ] Electronic Arts acquired JAMDAT for $680 million in 2006. [5] Lasky served as executive vice president of mobile and online games at Electronic Arts from 2006 to 2007, after the JAMDAT acquisition. [9]
Lasky joined Benchmark in 2007 as a general partner. [10] He focuses on identifying investment opportunities in mobile, games, digital privacy and identity, and online education. [10] He has led the firm’s investments in and serves on the boards of Snapchat, Ubiquity6, [11] CyanogenMod, Engine Yard, Gaia, Riot Games, PlayFab, [12] Vivox, Grockit, Gaikai, RedRobot, Meteor Entertainment, thatgamecompany, and NaturalMotion. [5] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
In June 2012, VentureBeat asked Lasky about the current state of the gaming industry. Lasky replied:
We have seen disruptions come on a regular basis, like when we have a console transition. But I have never seen four major disruptions come all at the same time. We have disruptions in platforms, business models, content, and distribution. It’s the most exciting time I’ve ever seen.
Mitch Lasky is the father Benjamin Lasky, who is better known as musician and YouTuber Quadeca.
Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden.
EA Mobile Inc. is an American video game development studio of the publisher Electronic Arts (EA) for mobile platforms.
Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion. Index Venture partners appear frequently on Forbes’ Midas List of the top tech investors in Europe and Israel.
John William Gurley is an American businessman. He is a general partner at Benchmark, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in San Francisco, California. He is listed consistently on the Forbes Midas List and is considered one of the top dealmakers in the American technology industry.
Matt Cohler is an American venture capitalist. He worked as Vice President of Product Management for Facebook until June 2008 and was formerly a general partner at Benchmark. Cohler has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top technology investors and in 2019 was named to the New York Times and CB Insights list of top 10 venture capital investors. Cohler made the Forbes 'America's 40 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40' list in 2015.
Ngmoco, LLC was an American-based publisher of video games for the iOS and Android platforms, and a subsidiary of DeNA Co., Ltd. The company was founded by former Electronic Arts executive Neil Young in July 2008. Since its founding, ngmoco has had more than seven million combined game installs. Venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Norwest Venture Partners, among others, have financed the company with a combined total of US$40.6 million. The company is most well known for their publishing of the Rolando game series and Eliminate Pro.
Gaikai is an American company which provides technology for the streaming of high-end video games. Its technology has multiple applications, including in-home streaming over a local wired or wireless network, as well as cloud-based gaming where video games are rendered on remote servers and delivered to end users via internet streaming
CyanogenMod is a discontinued open-source operating system for mobile devices, based on the Android mobile platform. Developed between 2009 and 2016, it was free and open-source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, with added original and third-party code, and based on a rolling release development model. Although only a subset of total CyanogenMod users elected to report their use of the firmware, on 23 March 2015, some reports indicated that over 50 million people ran CyanogenMod on their phones. It was also frequently used as a starting point by developers of other ROMs.
Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or game streaming, is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams the game's output directly to a user's device, or more colloquially, playing a game remotely from a cloud. It contrasts with traditional means of gaming, wherein a game is run locally on a user's video game console, personal computer, or mobile device.
Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management.
Jam City, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Culver City, California. The company was founded in 2010 by Chris DeWolfe, Colin Digiaro, Aber Whitcomb, and Josh Yguado. Jam City has nine studios located in the United States, Canada, South America, and Europe. As of 2021, it employs 825 people. Netmarble is the largest shareholder in Jam City. As of 2021, Jam City's games have 31 million monthly active users and 1.3 billion total downloads.
Balderton Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, that invests in early-stage, technology and internet startup companies in Europe. It is considered to be among the four-biggest venture capital firms in the English capital.
Scan is a mobile app development company headquartered in Provo, Utah, United States. The company was founded in January 2011 by Garrett Gee together with his college friends Ben Turley and Kirk Ouimet. The company, owned and operated by Scan, Inc, was acquired by Snapchat in 2014 for $54 million.
Optimizely is an American company that provides digital experience platform software as a service. Optimizely provides A/B testing and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, and feature toggle capabilities, as well as web content management and digital commerce.
Spark Capital is a venture capital firm in the United States, responsible for early-stage funding startups of consumer, commerce, FinTech, software, frontier, and media sectors. It has branches in San Francisco, Boston, and New York City.
TinyCo is a mobile video game studio and the creator of Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, Futurama Worlds of Tomorrow, Marvel Avengers Academy, Guess!, Spellstorm, Tiny Castle, Tiny Monsters, Tiny Village, and Tiny Zoo.
The following is a timeline of the history of the photo messaging software Snapchat.
Storm8 Inc. is a mobile social game developer founded in 2009 by former Zynga designer, Garrett J. Remes, as well as former Facebook engineers, including Perry Tam, William Siu, Chak Ming Li, and Laura Yip in Redwood Shores, California. Notable games include the Restaurant Story franchise, Dragon Story, Bubble Mania, Fantasy Forest Story, Castle Story and iMobsters.
Snap Inc. is a technology company, founded on September 16, 2011, by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown based in Santa Monica, California. The company developed and maintains technological products and services, namely Snapchat, Spectacles, and Bitmoji. The company was named Snapchat Inc. at its inception, but it was rebranded Snap Inc. on September 24, 2016, in order to include the Spectacles product under the company name.
Arjun Sethi is an American internet entrepreneur, investor and executive. He is co-founder and partner at venture capital firm Tribe Capital. He previously was partner at Social Capital and served as an executive at Yahoo! where he launched Yahoo! Livetext. Before that, he was co-founder and CEO of MessageMe and he was CEO of Lolapps, the developer behind Ravenwood Fair. In December 2023, he became Tribe Capital's chairman and CIO.