YetiZen™

Sana Choudary has a reputation as a powerful force in creating successful entrepreneurs. She has been highly active in the entrepreneurial community throughout her career and a leading member of Women 2.0 and StartupWeekend.

Most notably she founded UltraLight Startups, the premier NYC startup entrepreneurial community that has helped thousands of startups learn and practice agile business methods, understand and navigate the East Coast investment landscape, and clarify and strengthen their business strategies.

Armed with these experiences and a degree with distinction at marketing, management and psychology from the prestigious McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia, Sana moved to the Bay Area. There she founded Traffichoney, a successful social games consulting company which pulled together a seasoned team of social thought leaders, from companies like Zynga and Hive7. Together the team worked with large studios such as MTV Network’s AddictingGames and Shockwave properties on various initiatives to socialize their games and platform including an end to end virtual currency integration plan.

Sana’s background in entrepreneurial education and growth, and unique understanding of social game mechanics and trends made her a favorite in gaming and entrepreneurial circles, allowing her to develop an extensive professional network. Sana partnered with Japheth Dillman, an industry veteran with a similar passion for facilitating industry growth and innovation, to co-found SF Game Developer’s Workshop. Now, with her focus on YetiZen, the most significant and intensive accelerator in the games space, she will quickly reshape the face of the game industry.

At YetiZen Sana’s role is to help phenomenal entrepreneurs thrive by developing strong business, product, and marketing strategies, and by building the professional network that would become instrumental in the success of accelerated companies. As a well known thought leader in the games space Sana often shares her ideas of the business of games at @SanaOnGames. When she is not doing that she is usually smoking a hookah with Japheth.

Japheth Dillman began making games over 20 years ago, taking collegiate courses in programming at the wee tender age of 10 in order to learn to program his own games. You can blame the Atari 2600 he received for his sixth birthday for sparking and igniting the fire; he was hooked. Starting out on his Tandy 500 and Apple III he was making adventure games (using ASCII art) and MUDs (text based multi-user dungeon) games.

The grown-up version of Japheth is equal parts Producer, Game Designer, and Evangelist. He is a veteran to the game space, having worked as an Executive Producer and Lead Designer at numerous studios such as Digital Chocolate, Flying Wisdom Studios, BigPoint, Chugulu, Aftershock Innovations, and many others. Japheth has also guided many successful gaming platforms such as Kidlandia, Casualing, Gamify, Wild Pockets, and Flying Wisdom Studios’ COIN to name a few. A product visionary, Japheth drives feature roadmaps and game design in fast paced startups. Finding enormous success in mobile and social games, Japheth now has co-founded the YetiZen Game Accelerator program (www.YetiZen.com) as Chief Creative Officer, along with his business partner Sana Choudary, to help other startups find monumental success.

YetiZen ensures success through mentorship, team building, partnerships in the game space, and investment opportunities. YetiZen’s educational program for startups focuses on viral mechanics, monetization methods, gamification, analytics, distribution, business strategies, and game design. Japheth, considered a thought leader in the games space, is also a seasoned speaker at numerous game industry events. Through YetiZen he also leads and co-organizes the San Francisco Game Developer’s Workshops.

Outside of games, Japheth has established himself as a leader in the community by serving on the Executive Board of Directors for the Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation, founding the Eastern Illinois University Computer Club, mentoring children through after-school programs, and volunteering as docent giving tours at local art museums.

Want to get to know him better?

Invite him over for a hookah.

Darren Markovitz has a rich history monetizing social games, founding one of the first ad networks on Facebook and pioneering two social game companies. He directed social media for traffic marketplace and handled strategic partnerships for the social division of the Epic Media Group. Darren has a history of helping companies grow revenue with creative monetization solutions, bringing brand budgets to social games. Darren has advised multiple companies on revenue strategies, acquisitions, and corporate recruitment dramatically increasing the market valuation of each company he has worked with. Darren is committed to leveraging the power of the YetiZen developer network comprised of more than 5,000 developers, to create significant opportunities for the group’s members.

Pam Dakan (originally from London, England) comes from a background in project / property management, sales, marketing and business development. She is the former CEO and Founder of Pam Dakan International, Inc., a residential and commercial real estate company.

Prior to running her own real estate business, she was working in commercial property management in San Francisco, which led to a position on the development team with Spieker Properties / Equity Office Properties. This involved the design, construction and development of the largest mixed use development in San Jose, consisting of 555,000 square feet of Class A office buildings, and 42,000 square feet of retail.

In addition to liaison with architects, project engineers, and landscape architects, she was involved with the approval of design and construction materials, negotiated work contracts with regards to pricing, materials and scope, and worked with a budget in excess of $155 million, ensuring the project stayed within it’s fiscal boundaries. She was also involved with the leasing of the buildings after completion, with revenues of over $1M per month per building.

Pam became interested in the online game industry while working with the CEO and co-founder of Triggerspot, Inc., a digital entertainment consultancy and online games distributor, and thinks the games industry should have more rock stars, so she obliged.

Dakan has 17 years of experience with residential and commercial real estate sales, property management, contract negotiation, client care and retention, and business development. She is a Certified International Property Specialist and a Graduate of the Realtor Institute. She has solely closed over $100M in business resulting from residential and commercial real estate sales and has always believed in having an entrepreneurial spirit. She holds a BA in English from Canterbury University in the United Kingdom.

Christopher Ory believes in wizards.

Gordon Lai has a strong background in technology and gaming, having to worked with and exposed to countless of tech and game startups. Due to his heritage and environment, he is immerse with both knowledge of the East and West. Exposed to the technological advances in the West and connected with the rapid growth in the East, he developed a huge craving for knowledge at a young age.

To satisfy his hunger for knowledge in the tech and gaming realm, YetiZen was the answer. He is currently the Staff & Event Manager, the Stealth Ninja for YetiZen, organizing and coordinating the company’s events and running evil (but fun) operations within the gaming space!

If you’re a gaming startup or large company looking to innovate with fantastic developers, connect with Gordon! He will know best where to direct you!

Brandan is a graduate of the Technocultural Studies program at UC Davis. His studies taught him about how science and technology have shaped and defined today’s culture. Brandan is a jack-of-all-trades intern at YetiZen, helping develop online and offline community presence: writing blog posts, press releases and planning parties. He is a big supporter of non-profits & public media and wants to start a career designing positive-impact and educational games. In his spare time, Brandan likes to draw pictures of fantastical beasts and dream about what it would be like to play Magic: The Gathering with Richard Garfield.