Saturday, April 17, 2010

Dennis Fong - Xfire


The Company: Xfire, a site where gamers hang out and challenge each other to games via an instant messaging window, was sold to Viacom for $102 million in April, after a bidding war. Viacom paid more than 10 times the company's revenues -- double the multiple MySpace got. But the deal has some risks: It could damage Xfire's gamer street credibility making Fong look like a sell-out.

Funding: Fong raised $11 million, part of which was a defense against a threatened intellectual property lawsuit by Yahoo, which was eventually dropped.

Background Check: A professional gamer in high school, Fong won six figure endorsement deals and a Ferarri, among other spoils. He started Gamers.com, a site with gaming tips and techniques with his brother in the mid-1990s. But he was shoved aside for a "grown up" CEO. He co-founded Xfire in 2002.

Dennis Fong


No comments:

Post a Comment