I N N OVATION & TE CH NO LO GY CHR I S D E WO L F E
1/ DeWolfe (left) with Jam City co-founders Aber Whitcomb (middle) and Josh Yguado (right)
MOBILE MEDIA MASTERMIND Innovation & Technology - Jam City [CULVER CITY]
Myspace co-founder and CEO of Jam City Chris DeWolfe has taken two LA-based tech companies past the $250M mark
BY WHITNEY VENDT
CHRIS DEWOLFE CEO, Jam City AGE 50 EDUCATION B.S., University of Washington; M.B.A., USC RESIDENCE Los Angeles FAMILY Two daughters PASSIONS OUTSIDE THE OFFICE Being a dad, animal rescue, hiking CAN’T-MISS EVENTS CES, SXSW, Zeitgeist, Casual Connect, Fortune Brainstorm Networks: USC alumni events, EY Network AWARDS / HONORS EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, USC’s Alumnus of the Year Award JAM CITY [FORMERLY SGN] FOUNDED 2010 HQ Culver City EMPLOYEES 500 2015 REVENUE $250M NOTABLE PRODUCTS Top-grossing signature
mobile games Cookie Jam, Panda Pop, Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, Marvel Avengers Academy, and more
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hris DeWolfe didn’t initially set out to be an entrepreneur, but in retrospect, he sees he had behaviors that would lead him in that direction. As a kid he started his own yard work business with his brother; he sold popcorn and peanuts for the Portland Beavers minor-league baseball team; and he took on leadership positions in high school and sports. Eventually he began taking entrepreneurship classes and building business plans at USC. “That’s when I really got the bug,” he says. “My first real company was a marketing company called Response Base–an ad network where we bought and sold media and products. We had about 50 people in the company and sold it within a year and a half.” But what DeWolfe would become known for was his next company: Myspace. Co-founded in 2003 by DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, Myspace was designed as a digital space for musicians to share music with their fans. It quickly grew into a social media giant, reaching 106 CSQ.COM / WINTER 2017 - Q1
million accounts by 2006. DeWolfe guided Myspace as CEO until 2009, at which point he and Myspace CTO Aber Whitcomb teamed up with former 20th Century Fox executive Josh Yguado to build mobile gaming company SGN (rechristened Jam City in September), which is on track to make $350M in revenue for 2016. Very few people–Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, Steve Jobs–can boast of having taken two companies past the $250M mark, but money and notoriety have never been what drives DeWolfe. “What has always motivated me is consumers playing, using, and consuming a product that our company has developed. In the early days when we had 50,000 users on Myspace, I would get so excited when I heard someone mention the name ‘Myspace’; and later on when we had 500,000 users, I could go into a college computer center and every single screen would be Myspace.” This love of building and watching a company grow meant that DeWolfe was