Founder & Chairman

Rick Thompson

Rick is an entrepreneur and investor with a focus on the social web and a passion for social gaming.

Previously Rick served as the founding CEO and/or Chairman of several successful internet technology companies: Playdom (acquired by the Walt Disney Company in 2010); Adify (acquired by Cox Enterprises in 2008); FlyCast Communications (initial public offering in 1999, acquired by CMGI in 2000); and was the first engineer at Octel Communications (initial public offering in 1987, acquired by Lucent Technologies in 1997.)

In addition to Idle Games, Rick currently serves as Chairman of Dogtime Media, Wild Needle and Raka Games. Rick is also lead investor and board member for Cie Studios.

Rick holds a BS in Psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MBA from the Wharton School.

Co Founder, CEO & Executive Creative Director

Jeffrey Hyman

In 2000 Jeffrey Hyman founded the interactive advertising agency COG1. COG1 clients included: CBS, MTV, and HBO. Jeff even had the chance to work with a few companies that had names longer than 3 letters. In addition to founding the company, Jeff’s dual roles at COG1 were CEO and Creative Director.

In 2007, Jeff wrote and sold a show to MTV. His first TV show was optioned by Renegade 83 and produced for MTV. Credits included: Creator & Executive Producer. As a result of this achievement, COG1 made #2 and Jeff launched a new company named COG1 Entertainment. COG1 Entertainment is represented by Endeavor/William Morris.

In November of 2009, Jeff was offered the opportunity to start a new venture financed company alongside Silicon Valley legend Rick Thompson.

Jeff heard opportunity knocking and thought after 11 years, and 40 consecutive quarters of growth & profit … this was as good of time as any to agree to be bought out.

After a relaxing one day vacation, Jeff immediately began focusing on getting “Idle Games” off the ground and into the stratosphere.

The good news for Idle Games is that Jeff apparently doesn’t suck. His work in advertising has been recognized at: The One Show, Cannes Cyber Lions, CLIOs, National ADDYs, Best of Division ADDY, Adweek Magazines Icon Awards, AD:Tech, NYC Advertising Festival, and Adweek & Brandweek Magazines’ MIXX Awards.

Executive Vice President, Product

Eyal Shavit

Before joining Idle Games, Eyal was the Senior Vice President of Product Engineering at SnapLogic, a leading cloud integration company. Eyal was also the Executive Vice President of Product Engineering at Mevio (formerly known as PodShow), the leading online video and audio network for episodic entertainment. At Mevio, Eyal brought to market, scaled and sustained a world-class entertainment platform focused on monetization of media through multiple sources: advertisement, transactions and syndication.

Before Mevio, Eyal managed worldwide engineering at Macrovision Corporation (now known as Rovi) with development centers in the U.S., Europe, and India. While at Macrovision, Eyal was responsible for an internationalized game syndication and commerce platform, servicing over 250 affiliates including major portals such as Yahoo! Games worldwide, AOL Games, Disney and Earthlink.

Eyal earned a Ph.D. and a Masters degree in Artificial Intelligence, and holds a Bachelors of Science degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics.

Vice President, Revenue and Acquisition

Shannon Sullivan

Shannon came to Idle Games from Disney Mobile where she was Head of Monetization and Strategy focused on smartphone games.

Prior to Disney, Shannon was a Senior Engagement Manager with strategy consulting firm McKinsey & Company. At McKinsey, Shannon led growth-strategy projects in number of sectors, including consumer tech, cleantech, telecom, and hospitality.

Prior to McKinsey, Shannon worked on two new product launches at Genentech, focusing on pricing, positioning, and consumer research. Before Genentech, Shannon was a Product Manager and overall utility player at a venture-backed startup building an online services marketplace. Shannon also completed a leadership development program at Gap, Inc and was a Merchant and Planner in the Gap Men’s International Division.

Shannon has an M.B.A. and M.A. Education from Stanford University and a B.S. in Cognitive Psychology from Duke.

Chief Architect

Tim McClarren

Tim has been working on internet-related technologies for more than 25 years.

In 1994, joined Netscape Communications and delivered versions 0.4 through 3.07 of Netscape Navigator. Tim went on to join Nominum as Chief Architect for client applications, and later, was recruited to BEA where he contributed to highly regarded Java IDE, Workshop.

An avid gamer who contributed to multiple open-source gaming tools, Tim was recruited to virtual world company Doppelganger where he was responsible for server side simulation, and many architectural and design decisions allowing for scale and very fast client load times.

Tim met Jeff Hyman and Rick Thompson through a mutual colleague near the inception of Idle Games, and was so enthused at the prospect of building a casual MMOG platform, he joined and was at work two days later. Tim’s role has been to architect and build a scalable platform that enables massively multi-player gaming via social networking sites such as Facebook.

Tim holds a BS in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Illinois.

General Counsel

Derek Eletich

Derek is our General Counsel responsible for all legal affairs and business operations. Prior to joining us in January 2011, Derek was the Assistant General Counsel at another social gaming company, Playdom.

Derek had previously spent twelve years as a trial attorney specializing in intellectual property and commercial litigation. During Spring 2011, Derek taught a class on Social Network, Portable Devices and User Generated Content Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Derek received his Juris Doctor from Santa Clara University School of Law in 1997, and his Bachelors of Arts in Political Science and Asian Studies with High Distinction from the University of Michigan in 1994.