Pocket Gems is a San Francisco mobile-games studio behind hits like War Dragons and Episode - Choose Your Story. Founded in 2009 by Daniel Terry and Harlan Crystal above a pizza shop while Terry was still at Stanford, the company builds AAA-quality mobile games and a Hollywood-grade interactive storytelling platform, powered by its proprietary mobile-first Mantis Engine and backed by Sequoia Capital and Tencent.
Ben Liu is the CEO of Pocket Gems, a San Francisco-based mobile entertainment company backed by Tencent and Sequoia Capital. After joining as COO in 2011 and becoming CEO in 2012, he has led the company's flagship titles — the interactive storytelling platform Episode (with 25 million+ registered creators) and the real-time 3D strategy game War Dragons — while overseeing $155 million in total fundraising, mostly from Tencent. A Stanford double-degree and MBA graduate, Liu brings a rare hybrid background spanning investment banking, Disney strategy, EA mobile product management, and social gaming before betting on the mobile-first future of entertainment.
Michael Dawson is the Chief Business Officer and Head of Storytelling Studio at Pocket Gems, the San Francisco mobile gaming studio behind Episode and War Dragons. With a background spanning management consulting, clean-tech startups, and entrepreneurship, Dawson joined Pocket Gems in 2011 and helped scale it into one of the most successful mobile entertainment companies in the world — overseeing products that have been downloaded over 325 million times and platforms where billions of story episodes have been read. He holds degrees from Yale (Ethics, Politics & Economics) and Stanford (MBA, MS in Environment & Resources), and has become one of the sharper strategic voices in mobile interactive storytelling.