Paul Thelen

Paul Thelen

Paul Thelen, circa 2008
Occupation Businessman
Founder Big Fish Games

Paul Thelen is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Big Fish Games.[1] He has an MBA from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington. Big Fish Games is one of the top grossing mobile game developers in the world and operates the largest portal for downloadable casual games, distributing in excess of 1.5 million games per day.[2] Big Fish Casino, one of Big Fish Games' best known mobile titles, has been a top 10 grossing game for the past 4 years.

Big Fish Games was acquired by Churchill Downs for $885 million on November 12th, 2014.[3] Thelen remained on as President of Big Fish Games after the acquisition.

Career

After graduating from the University of Washington in 1989, Thelen started his career as a Systems Engineer and Marketing Manager with the Seattle Marketing and Sales office of IBM. After four years at IBM, Thelen left to join a small distribution software developer for mainframe VM and MVS systems, to start a systems integration division for the 12 person company.

While at Stanford University, Thelen focused his studies on technology and marketing and then entered the field of strategic business consulting for Mercer Management Consulting. At Mercer, Thelen worked on developing targeted customer marketing solutions and customer database mining programs for several companies including First Interstate Bank (acquired by Wells Fargo) and Sprint Telecommunications.

Acting on his desire to get back into the trenches with a technology company, Thelen accepted an offer from RealNetworks. While there, Thelen successfully launched RealAudio (stereo streaming audio over the Internet) and RealVideo; wrote the business plan and deployed the RealProducer and RealPublisher media editing, compression and deployment tools; and lead strategy for the Media Systems division as Group Product Manager. Thelen then moved on to co-found the games business at RealNetworks. Thelen wrote the business plan[4] for the RealArcade Service, the RealArcade Client, and the Game Pass Subscription service.[5]

In 2002, Thelen founded and bootstrapped a startup company Big Fish Games with $10,000 of his own seed capital. During the start-up phase of Big Fish Games, Thelen was very sick with an undiagnosed, life-threatening illness that progressed for 5 years. In 2004 his issue was finally correctly diagnosed and, after surgery and a six month recovery period, the issue was finally resolved.[6] Back to full health, Thelen grew Big Fish Games rapidly. In 2005 he secured $8.7 million in angel funding and in 2008 he raised an additional $83.6 million from Balderton Capital, General Catalyst and Salmon River Capital in a common share stock sale.[7] In 2012 Thelen returned to the role of CEO at Big Fish and acquired Self Aware Games, the developer of the top grossing social casino game for mobile[8] [9] Big Fish Games has corporate offices in Seattle, Washington; Oakland, California; and Luxembourg.[10]

On November 12th, 2014, Big Fish Games, the Company Founded by Thelen in 2002, was acquired by Churchill Downs for $885 million. Thelen will remain at Big Fish Games and continue to run Big Fish Games, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Churchill Downs Inc. [11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Big Fish Games Founder Paul Thelen's Keynote Presentation Redefines the Games Industry from MarketWatch
  2. ↑ Shattering the casual gamer myth from Seattle Times
  3. ↑ Churchill Downs to Buy Big Fish Games for Up to $885 Million from New York Times
  4. ↑ Paul Thelen on games, startups and ineffective business plans from TechFlash
  5. ↑ Big Fish CSO: 'Casual' And 'Hardcore' Insufficient To Define Market from Gamasutra
  6. ↑ Thelen worked through illness to launch Big Fish from Bizjournals
  7. ↑ Big Catch: Big Fish Games Raises $83 Million Funding from CBS News
  8. ↑ Paul Thelen returns to CEO potion to celebrate the company's 10 year anniversary.
  9. ↑ [http://www.geekwire.com/2012/big-fish-places-bet-casino-game-maker-buys-aware-games/ Big Fish bets on casino game maker, buys Self Aware Games
  10. ↑ Big Fish picks Ireland for European expansion from Bizjournals
  11. ↑ Big Fish Games to be acquired for $885 million by racetrack operator Churchill Downs from Geek Wire


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