Exclusive: Pogo Founders Bounce Into NeoEdge

IndustryGamers can exclusively announce that NeoEdge, known for its advertising and community solutions in the casual games space, will be merging with Offspring.  This partnership will bring former Pogo executives Lesley Mansford, Andrew Pedersen, Karen Schulman, and Todd Heringer on to the company. These are true casual games pioneers and should give NeoEdge a big lift. 

“This experienced executive team, each with almost 20 years in the games industry, allows NeoEdge to expand beyond its current offerings by providing original content, social enablement of games, and the ability to launch games and services onto new platforms,” said Dan Servos, Senior Vice President, Advertising Sales & Business Development at NeoEdge. “Their addition to the NeoEdge team will only help our current and future customers more effectively reach their advertising goals with the latest innovations in immersive advertising.”

“Having worked with Lesley and the other executives at Electronic Arts, I have been extremely impressed with how they built Pogo.com into the #1 casual games site. They will now be focused on helping NeoEdge build great games by bridging casual games with social networks,” said Paul Lee, principal of Vanedge Capital, which co-led $4 million in funding for NeoEdge in September. “This merger is a perfect fit, combining NeoEdge’s strong technical advertising platform with the Offspring teams' business and game development acumen and deep knowledge in the casual and social games space.”

Lesley Mansford will now take on the role of CEO, leading the newly merged company along with NeoEdge’s Dan Servos.  Andrew Pedersen, Karen Schulman, and Todd Heringer will all serve in Senior Vice President roles.  We had a chance to briefly talk to Mansford about what this move would bring to the digital media services platform.

IndustryGamers: Tell me a little bit of the back story surrounding this move.

Lesley Mansford: All of us were co-founders of Pogo, many of us working from inception for many years.  Pogo was bought out by EA, and we founded Offspring a few months ago to focus on web and social platforms as both a publisher and developer of casual games. We had been self funding and talking to VCs, including the one that led to the combination with NeoEdge.  We could provide the content they were looking for and they had the digital media platform to deliver it; a perfect fit, really.

IG: How will the experience at Pogo shape NeoEdge?

LM: The four of us that founded Offspring, we each have different skills and we really have expertise in building online communities.  We also have experience in taking a casual game mechanic and making sure that it works for a wide demographic and is fun for many hours.  Apart from making games, we are good at engaging an audience and keeping them with us.  We’ll work on the web and some of the new social platforms.  We believe quality game experiences that will win out and we’re trying to create something original.

IG: In what direction are you looking to take NeoEdge?

LM: We’re going to continue to provide what we’re calling digital media services, giving advertisers access to this technology of putting in video ads easily and add in a loyalty feature as a benefit to our partners.  We’re going to give features beyond just games that will be received well by advertisers and consumers.  We’re also hiring staff for our San Francisco studio for a title on Facebook.

IG: Finally, will there be any sort of collaboration in the future with EA, which now has Playfish in addition to Pogo?

LM: Right now, we’re wide open.  We have a strong connection to EA, and you never know what the future will hold, but right now we’re going to work with our own partners.

IG: Thanks Lesley.