Startup Grind LA Welcomes Thom Kozik (Context Digital Media, Atari, MSFT)

13
Jul
2012
Author: Sam Osborn
1 Comment

Founder, Gamer, Angel Advisor and former National Security Agency intern Thom Kozik is a video game and tech executive. With more than 20 years in the digital gaming space, Thom was an Executive Vice President at Atari and he’s speaking at Startup Grind Los Angeles on July 26th so reserve your seat today.

He took the Atari legacy online and into the mobile space, and shepherded the transition of a gaming giant into new and diversified markets. In 2010, Thom spearheaded the Atari GO initiative, a program that Thom says aimed to use Atari’s catalog and partnered indie developers to “not only move Atari more aggressively into providing casual online and social games, but leverage that well of experience and creativity that all of these independent developers have.”

Thom was instrumental in transitioning Atari into the social gaming space as well, creating new revenue opportunities by building and acquiring a large infrastructure for online and social gaming, and opening that infrastructure to both developers interested in creating new Atari titles and online affiliates that could embed and host Atari’s games.  ”By taking that unofficial version down and replacing it with our official version,” he said, “they would be able to share in the revenue.”

His unconventional and aggressive approach has since lent itself to multiple ventures. In 2009 Thom, along with friend and Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, formed Nüko Entertainment as both an independent studio, and a talent house to roll-up fledgling online game developers and intellectual property to capitalize on the growth in the online gaming space category. Today, he serves as founder and CEO of Context Digital Media, and is on the board of several companies.

So make sure and join Startup Grind Los Angeles for updates on our future meetings, and come July 26th to hear Thom speak to us.