Bart Decrem
Bart Decrem | |
|---|---|
 Bart Decrem in 2015 | |
| Born | |
| Occupation(s) | SVP and General Manager, Mobile Games, at The Walt Disney Company (July 2010 - July 2013),
Founder and CEO Tapulous, Entrepreneur In Residence DCM, Founder and CEO Flock, Inc, Head of marketing, business affairs Mozilla Foundation, Co-Founder Eazel, Founder and Executive Director Plugged In |
Bart Decrem is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who, most recently, headed the Mobile Games business for The Walt Disney Company between July 2010 and the Fall of 2013.[1] He was born and raised in Belgium.
Early life
His first entrepreneurial venture was at the age of 13, when he started a weekly magazine for Belgium’s leading underground radio station while working as a DJ there. Decrem moved to the US to study law at Stanford University. After graduation, Decrem founded Plugged In, a non-profit organization in East Palo Alto that provided community members with Internet access and related educational programs. Plugged In was one of the first such Digital Divide programs in the United States.[citation needed]
Career
In 1999, Decrem co-founded Eazel, an open source Linux desktop start-up. Their software, Nautilus, continues to be popular among Linux users. Among other projects, he coordinated the creation of the GNOME Foundation. After Eazel shut down in 2001, Decrem spent 18 months in Seoul, doing business development for several local startups.
In 2003-2004, Decrem headed marketing and business affairs for the Mozilla Foundation. He coordinated Firefox marketing activities, including branding, the Firefox 1.0 launch and the creation of Spread Firefox, the community marketing effort for Firefox. He also headed up partnerships with Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Mozilla. His work for Mozilla was sponsored by Mitch Kapor’s Open Source Applications Foundation.
After leaving Mozilla, he started Flock, a startup building a social web browser.[2][3] Angel investors in Flock included Josh Kopelman, Gil Penchina, Joe Kraus, Scott Kurnit, Stratton Sclavos and others. VC investors included Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures and Shasta Ventures. He was Flock’s CEO through its Series C, and left the company in the Summer of 2006.
In 2007, Decrem worked as an Entrepreneur In Residence at DCM (Doll Capital Management).
In January, 2008, Bart Decrem was Founder and CEO at Tapulous, one of the first iPhone startups. Andrew Lacy was the Co-Founder at Tapulous. Tapulous is the company behind Tap Tap Revenge one of the first major game hits on the App Store.
In April, 2009, comScore announced that Tap Tap Revenge was the most popular App Store app of all times on the occasion on Apple’s announcement of the first one billion app downloads. At that time, according to comScore, Tap Tap Revenge was installed on 32% of all iPhones in the United States of America.[4][5]
In July, 2010 Tapulous was acquired by The Walt Disney Company.[6]
From July 2010 until June 2013 he was SVP and General Manager for Disney Mobile Games,[7][8] the group behind the smartphone hits Where’s My Water, Temple Run: Oz and Where’s My Mickey.[9][10][11]
Decrem was recognized as one of the fifty most creative people in business in 2009 by Fast Company,[12] and one of the 10 most creative people in the Music Biz by Fast Company,[13] He has also been featured in Advertising Age's "2010 Creativity 50" by Creativity.[14]
References
- ^ "Billboard Q&A: Tapulous Co-Founder Bart Decrem". Billboard.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "New 'Social' Web Browser Based on Firefox". Fox News.
- ^ "Flock founder hopes new browser will fly with users". InfoWorld.
- ^ "Music Games for iPhone Give Artists New Spotlight". The New York Times.
- ^ "Top 25 All-Time iPhone Apps Mostly Games". ComScore. Archived from the original on 2014-01-12. Retrieved 2014-01-12.
- ^ "Disney Buys Tapulous to Drive Mobile Strategy". The New York Times.
- ^ "Iphone game studio Tapulous has been acquired by Disney". Forbes.
- ^ "Bart Decrem on how to stay lean and mean in mobile gaming even when you're a part of Disney". TechCrunch.
- ^ "Lessons on games for mobile devices from the Vice President of Disney". forbes.ro.
- ^ "Bart Decrem King of the App Store". tijd.be.
- ^ "Bart Decrem at Webster University". webster.edu. Archived from the original on 2014-01-12.
- ^ "Most Creative Entrepreneurs Business". FastCompany.
- ^ "10 Most Creative people Music Biz". FastCompany.
- ^ "The 2010 Creativity 50". Creativity. Archived from the original on 2014-01-12. Retrieved 2014-01-12.