Who We Are

Adrian Hon, Founder and Chief Creative Officer

Over the past three years, Adrian has overseen the creative output of all of Six to Start’s main projects, including Liberty News, We Tell Stories, and Smokescreen. Adrian is also responsible for new concept and product development at Six to Start across a range of media including the web, mobile phones, and the real world.

Adrian is one of the world’s leading online and alternate reality game designers, having been influential in the genre since its birth. Previously, Adrian was Director of Play at Mind Candy, where he designed and produced Perplex City, the world’s first commercially successful ARG. Some of the venues at which Adrian has spoken include TED, Google, GDC, Nordic Game and the Montreal Games Summit.

Adrian previously studied neuroscience at Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the University of California at San Diego, and is the founder of the innovative Let’s Change the Game competition to produce an ARG to raise funds for charity.

Bryan Hill, CEO

Bryan is the CEO of Six to Start. Formerly, Bryan was Senior Vice President of video company Fifty Lessons and prior to that, spent nine years in various senior positions at visual imagery giant Getty Images. Bryan has an MSc in Marketing and a BSc in Economics.

Bryan loves a challenge and enjoys being at the leading/bleeding edge. In 1996 he worked in web marketing for PhotoDisc which launched its first ecommerce website that year; he then was central to the analogue-to-digital migration of Getty Images from 1999 onwards; in 2005 he began working with online video company Fifty Lessons, just after the launch of Google Video. Today, Bryan firmly believes that not only is social gaming is the future of consumer entertainment but that companies need to understand how powerful a marketing tool it can be to engage and build relationships with their existing communities and audiences.

Bryan may be a “commercial” guy but he loves and is a little jealous of those who can “create”. However, he still yearns back to the days in the late 1990s during his award-winning advertising (two awards from the One Show and the London International Advertising Awards).

Outside of his family and friend Bryan has three passions: golf (joy, despair and frustration all within a 4 hour round or 2 hour on the XBox), Tottenham Hotspur (joy, despair and frustration all within a 9 month season) and great food (just joy and then guilt-driven gym). He misses his skydiving and one day hopes to start jumping again (if he can convince his wife..).

Ernesto Jiménez, Lead Developer

Ernesto Jiménez is our lead engineering geek (a.k.a. lead developer), responsible for the technical aspects of our projects, and also involved in new concept and product development.

Ernesto studied Computer Science in Spain and finished his studies in Helsinki University of Technology (where Linux was born!). In Helsinki, he also took part in a multi-disciplinary Product Development Project for Nokia. While he was finishing his studies, he worked with a Spanish start-up building state-of-the-art services for managing and digitally signing contracts in the browser using digital certificates and smart cards, eventually becoming the lead developer and product manager.

In his spare time, Ernesto likes attending events, giving talks and building small products for different sorts of competitions. He has won over more than ten development competitions building games, and mobile and web products.

Matt Wieteska, Junior Producer and Game Designer

Matt was the lead designer on Six to Start’s Enigma Challenge, produced for Wired UK, and on the Last Word Challenge for New Scientist and Profile Books; Matt first worked at Six to Start as an intern on Smokescreen.

Matt is an award-winning poet and playwright, with his most recent play being one of Three Weeks “Three to see” at the Edinburgh Fringe 2009. In 2007, the production of his first play, ‘Sour Heart’, included an innovative Alternate Reality Game, ‘U-Media’, which expanded the background of the play through live online events and received widespread critical acclaim..

Previously, Matt studied English Literature and Classics at the University of Edinburgh, with a focus on the development of theatre and on gender theory. During his time at Edinburgh, Matt was an active member of the Edinburgh University Theatre Company, managing its Bedlam Theatre for the Fringe Festival in 2007 and directing eleven successful plays, alongside having four of his original scripts produced as part of the company’s regular output.

An avid player of both Poker and Go, Matt wishes he was better at both, but defies you to beat his highscore on Quadnet, a game which has given him the reflexes of a cat on speed. Writing his dissertation on Philip K. Dick has ensured he never quite believes what is happening to him, which is probably a good thing.

Belén Albeza, Developer

Belén is an expert software engineer and front-end developer on multiple platforms, having helped create iPhone games including Biolabs Outbreak and Diamond Drop, and won several development competitions organised by Telefonica R&D and Campus Party in rapid game development, rich internet applications, and web mashups.

Belén has a Computer Engineering degree from University of Alicante and a Master in Game Development from Pompeu-Fabra University. She also wrote a XHTML and CSS manual covering web development using W3C standards, “XHTML y CSS de una maldita vez”, used by many universities and high schools.

Tim Cooke, Non-Executive Chairman

Tim has worked in senior levels in media, software, and IT services companies throughout his working life.

Tim has a Chemistry MA and DPhil from Oxford University and an MTech from Brunel University. He was an early employee with Logica, where he held numerous senior management positions in the UK and overseas. He was later Managing Director of Oxford Molecular Group plc and floated this software based drug design and genomics company. He has also floated Intelligent Environments plc, the London stock market’s first internet company.

Tim holds a portfolio of Non-Executive Chairmanships and Directorships and is currently Chairman of Six to Start Ltd and Clarinet Ltd. He is also a Non Executive Director of Harmonic, a defence consulting company. He is also Venture Partner to NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, a leading investor in early stage technology companies.

Read more about Tim at his LinkedIn profile.

Jo Goodson, Non-Executive Director

Jo has over 20 years’ experience in a range of media and software businesses both as an Executive and a Non-Executive Director.

In 1998 Jo co-founded Mediagold. The company had offices in the UK, France, Italy, Spain and Germany and gave US software publishers access to the European market place. The UK company experienced high growth and solid profitability between 1998 and 2003 and the business was sold to French company Avanquest at the end of 2003. After leaving Avanquest, Jo continued to work with the Board on M&A projects and also worked as interim COO for Ariadne Capital.

Prior to MediaGold, Jo ran the European Sales Division for the highly successful US consumer publisher Broderbund. She was the second employee of the company and took it from start-up to £12million in revenue in two years. Previously, Jo was involved with a number of companies working with different emerging technologies and chaired the British Interactive Multimedia Association (BIMA).

Jo graduated from Bristol University with an honours degree in German. She lived and studied in Hanover for one year and speaks fluent German and French.

Read more about Jo at her LinkedIn profile.

Alumni

Over the years, we’ve had the privilege of working with some very talented people at Six to Start, including:

Dan Hon, Co-Founder of Six to Start, now at W+K. Read his blog.
Marc McGinley, Junior Game Designer
Claire Bateman, Junior Game Designer
Ben Burry, Developer
Paul Mison, Developer
Kass Schmitt, Developer
Andrew Hayward, Front-end Developer