Management Team
Captain Hoff is the CEO of RocketOn. He is also a founding member of the Academy of Television's Interactive Media Group and Vice Chairman of the San Francisco Chapter of the Producers Guild of America. Prior to starting RocketOn, he was the COO of Zannel, the first large-scale mobile instant media messaging platform. Before that, he was the North American Studio Head for Infospace, where he ran the U.S. mobile games publishing & development group. From 1998 - 2002, he was the Chairman & CEO of Spiderdance, Hollywood's leading interactive television studio, whose customers included NBC, Viacom, Time Warner, TBS, GSN and A&E. He also consulted for R/GA Interactive, designing projects for Kodak, Disney, Intel, AdAge, and Children's Television Workshop. From 1994 - 1998, he ran LavaMind, a developer & publisher of computer games and entertainment websites. While in Japan, he worked for Sega, generating new concepts for games and amusement rides. Prior to Sega, he was a Hollywood development executive at Fries Entertainment, where he managed TV development. He graduated from the University of California with a BS in Electrical Computer Engineering and went on to earn a Masters in Film & Television from USC. He is also the co-author of "Game Design Workshop" published by CMP in 2004.
Big Kahuna is the VP of Business Development & Marketing at RocketOn. He was formerly General Manager and Executive Producer at Vivendi Universal Games, overseeing Impressions Games, known for cutting edge historical RTS games and sims; and Papyrus Racing Games Studio, known for top-of-class Racing Simulations. At Vivendi Univeral Games, he also managed key franchises including Empire Earth, Nascar Racing, Lords of the Realms III, Caesar, SWAT, Leisure Suit Larry and others. Prior to Vivendi, he was Executive Producer at Hasbro Interactive / Infogrames / Atari, where he pioneered the casual games genre with the commercial success of Hasbro's "crown-jewel" properties including Monopoly, Scrabble and The Game of Life. Most recently, he was the Head of North American Publishing at Infospace, where he ran the largest mobile multiplayer tournament games network in the United States. Before Infospace, he was the Director of Product Development at Kayak Interactive, where he created the first real-time mobile-to-web MMO, Slingo2Go. Prior to Kayak, he was VP of Product Development at Chasma Interactive, transforming their mobile MMO technology platform and business model from a platform-play into a publishing-play. Earlier in his career, he was a Senior Producer at Virgin Interactive; he was also Studio Manager and Head of Technology at BAP Interactive.
Gnome is the COO of RocketOn. She was formerly a Development Director at Electronic Arts, where she managed the development process for multimillion dollar video game titles. From 1998 - 2002, she was COO and acting CFO of Spiderdance, Hollywood's leading interactive television studio, whose customers included NBC, Viacom, Time Warner, TBS, GSN and A&E. At two points in her career, she was the President of LavaMind, a developer & publisher of computer games and entertainment websites. She also worked at Morgan Stanley's Tokyo Branch as a Financial Analyst. In addition, she has worked in the film business, coordinating an international film co-production for NHK of Japan and Grundy Company of Australia. She is a graduate of ICU in Tokyo, Japan. She also has a passion for manga and anime, and has translated dozens of Japanese comic books and animations.
Snowdog is the Chief System Architect at RocketOn. He is a husky and loves to jump on anyone who happens to visit our offices. If you want to get anything done, please bring along a bone or two. Biscuits also work well when you need a software upgrade or a new feature. As a working breed, he is high-energy and requires lots of exercise. He acts as a loyal companion and has pulled our servers across many an ice sheet. Unfortunately, he's unsuitable as a guard dog. His strong sense of gentleness and devotion prevents him from scaring off even the most mild mannered hardware vendor. That said, if you get on his bad side, his behavior reverts to that of a wolf. He'll start howling, singing and talking in technical tongues. On a full moon, he's particularly hyperactive, displaying an overactive hunting drive, which is welcome in sales people, but not so needed in engineering. We are now giving him fifteen-minute daily obedience training classes to curb his stubborn and dominant nature. Despite these added costs, he's worth every penny. Snow Dog is extremely intelligent, and after learning a new skill, he will often show off and perform his new tricks in front of management. All in all, we couldn't ask for a better system architect.
Scar Face is the Lead Engineer at RocketOn and a capo in most powerful organization in South San Francisco. Despite a level of local notoriety, Scar Face has represented himself publicly as a data waste management consultant, one of the many fronts for his criminal enterprise software. On weekends, he is fond of chewing on cigars and shaking down young comp sci grad students for any knowledge they may have on the latest open source packages. He also enjoys lurking around the seamier parts of the Web, dabbling in risky URLs and domains which are unmentionable. He is particularly fond of sending out hits against competing gangs of geeks, who encroach on his business. After surviving several denial of service attacks, Scar Face has gone on the offensive. He's now throwing every packet he can muster against his rivals. Despite his use of violence, his short temper and shady dealings, he has killer instincts when it comes to coding and has produced some deadly results, making him the most fearsome engineer in the office.