Appointments to Advisory Board
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31 May 2019
Bidstack Group PLC ("Bidstack or "the Company")
Appointments of Ian Hetherington, Jon Epstein and Nav Sunner to Advisory Board
"Development Legend" Ian Hetherington, former CEO of GameSpot and Double Fusion Jon Epstein, and inveterate video games professional Nav Sunner join Bidstack's Advisory Board
Bidstack Group plc (AIM: BIDS.L), the native in-game advertising group, is pleased to announce the appointments of Ian Hetherington, Jon Epstein and Nav Sunner to its Advisory Board, following the recent appointments of Will Kassoy (AdColony, Activision Blizzard), Pete Beeney (Spotify) and Joel Livesey (The Trade Desk).
Ian Hetherington
Ian Hetherington has over 30 years' experience as an entrepreneur, founder and investor in the video game, emerging technology and digital sectors.
In 1985, he co-founded the video game developer and publisher, Psygnosis, the creator of two iconic games, Wipeout (Wipeout 2097 was ranked as the fourth best PlayStation game of all time by GameRankings) and Lemmings (declared in 1996 by Next Generation as the 8th-greatest game of all time).
The business was acquired by Sony in 1993 when Ian was appointed joint managing director of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, a position he held for five years. During this period, he built the leadership team and a staff of over 650 that developed and brought to market the first PlayStation console and games in Europe.
He subsequently founded and invested in both Evolution Studios (World Rally Championship) and RealTime Worlds Ltd. (Crackdown - named the 2007 BAFTA "Best Action and Adventure Game" and "Best Use of Audio" which also won the "Best Debut" award at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards) and was chairman of BigBig Studios (Pursuit Force - in 2006 The Times gave it five stars and said, "Even by the high standards already set, Pursuit Force is an astonishing title...), which was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2007.
Over the years Ian has backed many games developers including David Jones, creator of Grand Theft Auto. Ian was crowned a "Development Legend" by the Develop Industry Excellence Awards in 2007.
He now works with a diverse range of businesses in areas such as 3D mapping, simulation, machine learning, analytics, autonomous vehicles and machine processable real world data.
Jon Epstein
Jonathan Epstein is Senior Vice President of International for Sentient, where he is leading the growth of Sentient's Ascend product line outside of the Americas. Prior to assuming his current role, Jonathan was Chief Marketing Officer for Sentient.
A serial entrepreneur who has successfully launched and sold multiple companies at the intersection of technology, media and marketing, and gaming, Jonathan has more than 25 years of leadership experience. His career has included stints as founder and CEO of GameSpot, one of the top digital media brands for young adult males, as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Media for IGN Entertainment, another top media brand, and as president of Omek Interactive, the gesture technology company whose products are at the heart of Intel's RealSense technology. He has also served as CEO of Double Fusion, an in‑game advertising company, as president of GameSpy, a media and middleware company, and as CEO of Hawkes Remotes, a remotely‑operated underwater vehicle company.
Jonathan is a frequent speaker at conferences in marketing technology, gaming, gesture technology, and marine technology, and has published many articles in top marketing and technology publications. He has authored issued patents in fields as diverse as advertising audience measurement and fiber‑optic spooling technology for remotely operated vehicles, and has a pending patent in use cases for 3D gesture recognition.
Nav Sunner
Nav is a highly experienced lawyer, business development and business relationships expert immersed in the video games industry.
Nav has acted as both in-house counsel and external adviser for a variety of companies in the video games industry including developers, publishers and service companies and has been involved in the acquisition of, investment into and the IPO's of games businesses from both a legal and business perspective.
After qualifying as a lawyer with national law firm Pinsent Masons, Nav spent six years as head of legal at Codemasters and three years as General Counsel at Mastertronic. Following a further three years practising law as Co-Head of Interactive Entertainment for Osborne Clarke and, subsequently, as head of Computer Games for Wiggin, Nav spent two years as a commercial director for Microsoft.
In addition to his video game consultancy "Navatron", Nav is currently a director of an esports company, an adviser to a number of games companies and is Video Games Sector Principal for an M&A advisory firm.
James Draper, CEO of Bidstack, commented, "We are excited to add to the pool of talent which now surrounds Bidstack.
"We have been talking to Ian Hetherington for some time and are pleased that he has now come on board. He truly is a legend in UK games development and a key figure in the history of the Sony PlayStation.
"We believe Jon Epstein's experience will be of great value to us particularly following his time as CEO of Double Fusion, an in-game advertising business in the pre-programmatic world which was ahead of its time and fell victim to the 2009 recession.
"Nav is a force of nature in the world of video games and has already provided Bidstack with great contacts and legal advice.
"With these appointments, I think our Advisory Committee, with its unrivalled experience and relationships in both the video game and adtech communities, is complete for the time being. We are now working hard, with the help of our Advisory Committee, to ensure that we maximise the near term opportunities available in the coming months, which could be truly industry defining, given the expected launch of major cloud-gaming services later this year."
~ENDS~
Contacts
Bidstack Group PLC
James Draper, CEO +44 (0) 7850 341 885
SPARK Advisory Partners Limited (Nomad)
Mark Brady/Neil Baldwin/James Keeshan +44 (0) 203 368 3550
Peterhouse Capital Limited (Broker)
Eran Zucker/Lucy Williams/Duncan Vasey +44 (0) 20 7409 0930
Alma PR
Josh Royston/Sam Modlin +44 (0) 203 405 0205
Notes to editors
Bidstack is an advertising technology company which provides dynamic, targeted and automated native in-game advertising for the global video games industry across multiple platforms. Its proprietary API technology is capable of inserting adverts into natural advertising space within video games across multiple video games platforms (mobile, PC and console).
Bidstack's customers are games publishers and developers and advertising agencies, brands and programmatic advertising platforms. Bidstack contracts exclusive access to the native in-game advertising space within video games from their developers or publishers and sells that advertising space either direct to specific brands and their agencies or through programmatic advertising platforms.
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