Jon Epstein

So I ran that for a while.

And then as, you know, 2001 happened and, you know, the internet advertising market dried up, it was clear it was time to, you know, maybe go on again.

We had invested from ZDNet into GameSpy.

I was on the board there and they made a very concerted effort to recruit me.

So I joined Mark Surface.

And then did it again.

It wasn't my former partners at GameSpot were not super happy with this move since they said I was going to a competitor company.

but uh such as the well well tell us how that works you're you're a rational guy they must incentivize the hell out of you how they what they give you what character they give you uh game spy yeah um a nice salary in about eight percent of the company so you know it's a good package for uh for a ceo um game spy was pretty unique in that the founder mark surface had not taken in external money and he owned more than half of it so um and then in you know two and a half years we were able to

This was 2001, and I joined there in September 2001.

The company was sold March 2004 to IGN, and the two bidders were IGN and GameSpot.

That's funny.

But that was, I guess—

That one was around $61 million, if I recall.

And so I made more money on GameSpy than I did on GameStop.

I stayed at IGN for a while, and then after about six months, I made some money there as well because they sold the following year to Fox.

I had some shares there.

I went and joined a venture-backed startup called Double Fusion.

Double Fusion was a competitor to Massive, for those of you that remember the in-game advertising market.

So Double Fusion combined technology that could place ads inside of video games.

and then a media sales effort to then monetize that inventory.