| Paul Thelen | |
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Paul Thelen, circa 2008 |
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| Occupation | Businessman Founder Big Fish Games |
Paul Thelen is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Strategy 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. Thelen has more than 20 years experience working in technology. Big Fish Games is the largest portal for downloadable games in the world, distributing in excess of 1.5 million games per day.[2]
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After graduating from the University of Washington in 1985, Thelen started his career as a Systems Engineer with the Seattle Marketing and Sales office of IBM. After four years at IBM, Thelen left to join a small wholesale food distribution mainframe software developer 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[3] for the RealArcade Service, the RealArcade Client, and the Game Pass Subscription service.[4]
In 2002, Thelen bootstrapped startup Big Fish Games with a mere $10,000 during a period in his life when he was very sick with an undiagnosed, life-threatening illness.[5] Big Fish Games grew rapidly and secured $8.7 million in angel funding in 2005 and an additional $83.6 million from Balderton Capital, General Catalyst and Salmon River Capital in August 2008.[6] Big Fish Games now has 400 employees with corporate offices in Seattle, Washington, United States and additional offices in Vancouver, Canada and Cork, Ireland.[7]