Want the best industry connections and mentors for your game studio, platform or portal?

Join Game Dojos Accelerator

Applications are now open for teams in the game space to join us in a rigorous 3 month session of hands-on workshops, seminars, and mentorship with the leading producers, designers, developers, marketers, distributors, and investors in the industry. We'll provide your team with free or subsidized options for bay area work space and funding assistance options.

Applications for Feb 15 are closed. We are honored that we have had extremely strong response at a time when some accelerators are struggling. Responses range from veterans with arrays of games and millions of downloads to creative young startups as well as innovative and worthwhile platforms and tools.

Applications are open for the following round, it's always a good idea to get your application in early.

Jessica Kahn Vice President of Product, Engineering and Operations at Disney Mobile . Jessica's workshop will be on "the nuts and bolts behind building successful games" Jessica leads all engineering, operations and production of Disney Mobile's games, and oversees their Palo Alto and Prague studios. Jessica was the VP of Engineering of Tapulous, a start-up company acquired by DIMG in July 2010. As VP of Engineering, she managed all engineering and operations and drove the strategy and execution behind product development of social games and apps for the iPhone, most notably a #1 iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge, accounting for over a billion games played to-date. Jessica was also an Engineering Manager at Apple, responsible for technologies including Safari RSS and development of collaborative OS features

Dennis Ryan EVP Worldwide Publishing at PopCap Games (now EA) There is no-one more qualified to come and mentor teams for a workshop on growing your game studio than Dennis Ryan. Hired in 2005 as the first business executive Dennis helped grow Popcap from 30 to over 500 employees worldwide. He Helped achieve greater than 40% compounded annual revenue growth over the past six years, and consistently strong profitability for Popcap. In August 2011 Electronic Arts, Inc. acquired PopCap for $750M, and potentially $1.3B based on performance through December 2013. Previously, he was CEO of Allegis Corporation for five years when it pioneered on-demand SaaS for enterprise channel management. He was also CEO at Net-It Software, which developed intranet document management software, and Vice President at EO, Inc, which created early smart phones for AT&T. In 1987, Dennis was a founding team member of Claris Corporation (now FileMaker, Inc.) where he was group manager for information management products, including the ever-popular FileMaker database product line. Prior to Claris, he was a product manager at Apple Computer, Inc.

Josh Elman Principal at Greylock Partners What do Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have in common beside stunning success? If you answered Josh Elman you are correct. Josh served as Program Manager Facebook Platform, Product Manager for Twitter and Senior Product Manager for LinkedIn. Josh is now with Greylock Partners, which funded Facebook, Linkedin and Reddit among others. Obviously one of best platform and product managers in the business, Josh has offered to come and have office hours and/or workshop input to appropriate teams.

Nicolas Beraudo is the Vice President of Business Development of Glu Mobile responsible for worldwide licensing, OEM partnerships and our Glu Partners external developer program. A veteran in the video game industry, he has over 17 years of experience in sales, licensing and business development with leading publishers globally. Prior to joining Glu in 2005, Nic served as Senior Director of Licensing at Atari, Inc. where he was responsible for outbound licensing of the Atari and Hasbro portfolio on all new digital platforms. Nicolas also served as Vice President of Sales for Virgin Interactive and Director of Sales for Interplay Entertainment from 1996 to 2003. He holds an MBA in International Business from ESC Grenoble, France and a BS in Management from UMASS Dartmouth. Nicolas is an expert on game licencing and will have a session with GameDojos teams on that topic.

Rick Thompson Chairman and Co-founder Funzio, Wild Needle and previously Playdom Rick is a serial entrepreneur, in a good way. Prior to founding Playdom, Rick co-founded and served as CEO and/or chairman of two successful Internet technology companies, Adify and FlyCast Communications. Rick was also on the founding team of Octel Communications, a leading manufacturer of voice information processing systems. As the oldest (and, um, wisest) member of Playdom's founding team, Rick helps shape business strategy and reminds us to always think big. Rick holds a BS in psychology from UCSC and an MBA from the Wharton School. Rick will be mentoring teams in a workshop on the role of visionary spark and leadership in game studios today.

Cynthia Woll Cynthia recently completed a two-year stint as Creative Director for Disney Mobile, where she guided the design for the critically-acclaimed iPhone game “Where’s My Water?” as well as “Pirates of the Caribbean: Master of the Seas” and “Cars 2 AppMATes, a groundbreaking toy/iPad product. Cynthia has designed mobile games, social games, virtual worlds and reward systems for clients that include Tapulous, MTV, Neopets, DirecTV, AOL, Ultimate Movie Site, Buzznet.com, and Knowledge Adventure. In addition, as founder and CEO of Cul de Sac Studios and Angel City Games, she designed and launched a series of social games for Facebook including Burb Wars and Gossip Town. Prior to founding her own companies, Cynthia served as Executive Producer at Yahoo! Games, Executive Producer at Atari Inc., Sr. Producer at Electronic Arts, Director of Development at Mattel Media, Producer at Disney Interactive, and Executive Producer at Time Warner Interactive. Her published games are a diverse portfolio and include Yahoo! Chess, Barbie Magic Hair Styler, Dungeons & Dragons Online, online Scrabble and Monopoly, ClubWorld, and PopJax Video Trivia. Cynthia will be mentoring on game design and designing in monetization.

Drew Curby Senior Director, Sales & Marketing at IGN. Senior Director, Sales & Marketing at Fox Interactive Media Senior Director, Sales & Marketing at GameSpy Technology Group TBD Mentoring/Workshop. Drew - we still need your official pic & bio not that we don't love you catching fish!

Howard Chen Partner K&L Gates Howard will be advising teams on IP and company formation. Howard is focused on representing international companies - from blue-chip technology clients to small, aggressive startups - doing business in Asia and in the United States. He has gained a reputation as a practical attorney who understands the culture and business objectives of companies when dealing with cross-border transactions and litigations. He has deep knowledge of the business environment in China and strong working relationships with local government officials and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Mr. Chen advises his clients on IP strategies, procurement, licensing negotiation and IP litigation arising from patent, trade secret, copyright, trademark, unfair competition and licensing disputes. Mr. Chen also routinely advises clients on the international aspects of the technology business, including securing IP protections worldwide and establishing joint ventures with overseas partners.

Rob Jagnow CEO Lazy8 Studios . Rob Jagnow knows how to survive and thrive as a bootstrap Indie game studio. As a CEO who understands coding, designing and marketing in the Indie world, Rob will be giving an interactive workshop of practical Indie survival guide tips to our game studios. Whether it be consulting while coding your own games, whatever, Rob has done what it takes. Lazy 8 Studios created the award-winning game Cogs, which while polished and praised, did not gain traction immediately, and it is a testiment to Rob's perseverance and business creativity that he kept expanding to differerent distribution channels until it was a hit, including being in Humble Indie Bundle 3. Currently Rob and Brendan are up to something new at exoresearch.com, we can't wait!

Dave Castelnuovo, PocketGod Series Co-Creator, CEO Bolt Creative Dave is the lead programmer on the mobile game Pocket God series. Dave and Artist Allan Dye founded Bolt Creative in 2001. A few years ago they had a major mobile hit Pocket God. What is even more of a testimoney to their talent, skill and savvy is that they have managed to keep the series fresh and continuously in the iOS charts for years by doing excellent episodic updates. Last time we checked, Pocket God even expanded to a comic book series and is also on Android. Dave will pop in as time permits to answer some questions on making compelling games with smaller teams and designing good episodic updates for nurturing a new IP.

Charles Hudson is a Venture Partner with SoftTech VC and the CEO and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games , a mobile games company based in San Francisco, CA . Charles will be teaching teams something that will be valuable throughout their lives which is "Presenting Yourself". Charles is a man of many talents and has excellent business background in social/mobile games. Until February 2010, he was the VP of Business Development for Serious Business, a leading producer of social games. Zynga acquired Serious Business in February of 2010. Prior to Serious Business, Hudson worked at Gaia Interactive, Google, IronPort Systems, and In-Q-Tel. Hudson also founded Third Power LLC, a conference and events company that was acquired by WebMediaBrands (NASDAQ:WEBM). Charles holds an MBA and BA from Stanford University.

Rob Carroll is the Director of Publishing for Tapjoy , where he runs their Android porting fund and manages the publishing activities for the company. In his role with Tapjoy, Rob advises game developers of all sizes in the best practices of monetization, game mechanics and viral distribution for their mobile and social games. Prior to joining the Tapjoy team, Rob worked in the real world as a designer and producer for Zynga and Hive7 on their social games and as a console game producer at LucasArts. Odds are you have played one of his titles, such as Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, Street Racer, Pirates, YoVille, Knighthood, The Sindicate, Youtopia, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Star Wars: Elite Squadron and many others.

Suleman Ali is co-founder and CEO of TinyCo , a San Francisco-based mobile gaming company that has launched seven top-grossing iOS titles including Tiny Village and Tiny Zoo. Previously, he founded social applications start-up Esgut which was acquired by SGN in 2008.  Prior to Esgut, Suli worked at Microsoft as an engineer in the Windows division and as a PM on the Windows Home Server product for 3.5 years. He studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech. Suleman is an accomplished successful entrepeneur and will be sharing his knowledge of being an entrepeneur in the game business and in general and giving feedback to teams on their products and companies.

Kevin Dent CEO at Tiswaz Entertainment Kevin knows the ins and outs of dealmaking and has witnessed contracts that both made and destroyed development teams so, naturally that is a topic we will have Kevin advising teams on. Kevin is a ten year veteran from the digital video games space including a stint as Executive Vice President Business Development at Hands on Mobile which was in mobile game content before the big rush. After working on virtually every platform, Kevin set up Tiswaz Entertainment to help start-ups, publishers and investors reach their goals by leveraging his experience and network. Sometimes that means just making an introduction or finding a way to get a deal done, other times he helps PE/VC firms generate deal flow. Kevin started his career in the mobile entertainment space. He currently heads up the IGDA Mobile Special Interest Group.

Gus Tai General Partner at Trinity Venture, Board Member at Trion Worlds. Gus is well knowledgeable and respected in on early stage funding of winning companies and has a track record that includes successful game companies such as Trion and PlayFirst. Gus has specialized in funding early stage companies pioneering new market categories. He particularly enjoys getting involved at the time of company formation, working with founders to help build the team and refine the business model. What makes a successful team and stategy and how does Gus spot them? Gus will be coming to mentor the teams at GameDojos about that.

Scott Waugaman has experience as a senior producer/project manager at Zynga, Sony, Lucas Arts and Lionhead Studios. He will be mentoring teams on excecution and production and project managemanet. Scott has been in the games industry for over ten years, with experience across big publishers as well as small startups. He has teams of all sizes, and is passionate about the ability of creative people to work together, with minimal hindrance, on a common goal. You know that bureaucratic manager at your studio who wants you to write reports, attend meetings that aren't about the product, and outsource everything to China? Scott is the opposite of that guy. We look forward to Scott's input to GameDojos teams on all things excecution.

Michael Oiknine is a tried and true entrepreneur with over 15 years experience crafting and selling companies. As the co-founder and COO of Kefta, Inc., a SaaS provider of online behavioral targeting solutions, Michael was instrumental in growing and shaping the business before its acquisition by Acxiom. After earning his MBA from Harvard to complement his MS in Engineering from École Centrale Lyon in France, Michael was the managing director of GiSMo, a mobile payment startup owned by Millicom International Cellular and a consultant with Altis, a consulting firm now owned by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young in Paris, France. He is currently CEO and cofounder of Apsalar, a company providing Mobile Engagement Management (MEM) solutions to mobile app publishers.

Tim Chang Managing Director at Mayfield Fund Tim is a proven venture investor and experienced global executive. He invests in the mobile, gaming, digital media and enterprise applications sectors and co-leads Mayfield Fund's investment practice in China. Prior to joining Mayfield Fund, Tim spent five years as a Partner at Norwest Venture Partners. Prior to Norwest, Tim worked for Gabriel Venture Partners where he led their wireless and Asia Pacific practice. Tim began his career in venture capital in 1999 during his time at Stanford Business School as part of the founding team of CTR Ventures, a venture accelerator in Tokyo focused on seed and early-stage mobile consumer applications for the Japanese market. He was named on the 2011 Forbes Midas List of Top 100 Dealmakers, was featured by The Deal as one of five emerging VCs to watch and by the AlwaysON Hollywood IT List recognizing technology leaders in the digital entertainment industry. Tim is known in the game industry for his investments in Playdom, which sold to Disney for up to $763 million, and Ngmoco, which sold to DeNA for as much as $403 million.

Chris Farmer is a Venture Partner at General Catalyst Partners where he focuses on investments in consumer Internet, gaming and mobile and leads the firm's seed investment practice. Chris has been an active investor in the gaming industry and has led investments in Game Closure, Mino Monsters & Launchpad Toys and works closely with the firm’s investments in CCP Games (Eve Online), Big Fish Games & Vostu. Prior to joining General Catalyst Partners, Chris co-founded Ignition Talent Group, a talent acquisition firm focused on scouting out the next generation of entrepreneurs and recruiting the best executive and technical start-up talent. Previously, Chris was a Vice President withBessemer Venture Partners where he led investments in digital media & mobile companies, was a consultant with Bain & Co. and spearheaded the successful turnaround of Skybitz, a wireless services company, where he ledProduct Management, Finance & Business Development. He started his career in the private equity group of Cowen & Company. Chris received a BA in International Relations from Tufts University & the Fletcher School of Diplomacy.

Maha Ibrahim General Partner at Canaan Partners invests in digital media companies with the potential to become global market leaders. Maha is known in the venture industry for her ability to spot technology trends early, foster growth at her portfolio companies through hands-on operational guidance, and achieve profitable exits for entrepreneurs and investors. She joined Canaan in March of 2000 and focuses on digital media, networking and wireless investments. Maha has won numerous industry awards and is frequently invited to speak at digital media conferences. Maha holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in Organizational Behavior from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT. She currently sits on the boards of 3Crowd, InhaleDigital, Kabam, SenSage and Virsto. Maha is an active member of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab.

Joseph Gilby is a former executive from the games industry, running Game Development at a Vivendi Universal casual games company, Flipside, and heading Product Development at an international award winning immersive core games company, Looking Glass Studios. Joseph cut his teeth programming advanced mathematical surface algorithms and 3d graphics. He currently serves as Director for the International Game Developers Association / Silicon Valley chapter, and as an angel investor on the Keiretsu Forum’s Software Committee. Joe also personally advises industry startups.