GVU Brown Bag - Carl Freer

Co-hosted with the Wesley Center for New Media

This talk will focus on my experience starting and running high tech companies, especially in the mobile gaming and advertising space. I will speak about a range of topics, drawing on the successes and failures of my ventures over the years. In addition to my past experience with Gizmondo, I will speak on my future plans, including the relaunch of Gizmondo later this year in conjunction with mobile advertising and augmented reality ventures. Questions I will touch on include: How much concept is enough of an idea to launch a startup? How do you attract funding? How do you create value (from both a consumer and client basis)? How to handle the press? What are common development cycle expectations? Where are the pitfalls?

Be sure to bring your questions to this special industry-focused GVU luncheon lecture.

Carl Freer is a perhaps best known in the high-tech community due to his involvement with Gizmondo, a new game platform that he helped develop in 2004. The device, launched as a PSP killer, was widely anticipated in the gaming market, met with spectacular press and ended in a spectacular death.

During the past 15 years, Mr. Freer enjoyed a string of high-tech successes amassing an amazing $2.5Bn in market capitalization, successfully raising over $350M in investment capital and being honored as Swedens¹ Entrepreneur of the Year. He has been recognized as a pioneer in GPRS tracking systems, innovative approaches to advertising and has received numerous distinctions throughout the past 15 years.

Mr Freer¹s newest projects involve the relaunch of the Gizmondo, a mobile video application that delivers targeted advertisements called BlowfishWorks and development of a Mobile Augmented Reality player for his Magitech division.