Mitchell Harold "Mitch" Lasky (born January 18, 1962) is a general partner at the

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm

Benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Experimental benchmarking, the act of defining a ...

and a former entrepreneur and video game executive.

Education and early career

Lasky received a B.A. degree in History and Literature from Harvard College and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Early in his career, Lasky practiced law at the Los Angeles firm Irell & Manella, where he worked on various technology-related intellectual property cases. In 1993, he joined

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16 ...

. He left Disney in 1994 to launch a multiplayer online game company, Serum Entertainment Software. Lasky subsequently spent five years at video game publisher

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

, including a stint as executive vice president of Worldwide Studios, helping to launch ''

Quake 3 ''Quake III Arena'' is a 1999 first-person shooter game developed by id Software. The third installment of the ''Quake'' series, ''Arena'' differs from previous games by excluding a story-based single-player mode and focusing primarily on mult ...

'', ''

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater ''Tony Hawk's Pro Skater'', released as ''Tony Hawk's Skateboarding'' in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe, is a 1999 skateboarding video game developed by Neversoft and published by Activision. It is the first installment in ...

'', and ''

Spider-Man Spider-Man is a superhero in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he first appearance, first appeared in the anthology comic book ''Amazing Fantasy'' #15 (August 1962) in ...

''. In 2000, he joined mobile games company JAMDAT as CEO, and took the company public in 2004.

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

acquired JAMDAT for $680 million in 2006. Lasky served as executive vice president of mobile and online games at Electronic Arts from 2006 to 2007, after the JAMDAT acquisition.

Benchmark

Lasky joined Benchmark in 2007 as a general partner. He focuses on identifying investment opportunities in mobile, games,

digital privacy Digital privacy is often used in contexts that promote advocacy on behalf of individual and consumer privacy rights in e-services and is typically used in opposition to the business practices of many e-marketers, businesses, and companies to coll ...

and identity, and online education. He has led the firm’s investments in and serves on the boards of

Snapchat Snapchat is an American multimedia social media and instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of the app are that pictures and messages, known as "snaps", are usually availa ...

, Ubiquity6,

CyanogenMod CyanogenMod ( ; CM) is a discontinued open-source operating system for mobile devices, based on the Android mobile platform. Developed between 2009 and 2016, it was free and open-source software based on the official releases of Android by Goog ...

, Engine Yard, Gaia,

Riot Games Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher, and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles. It was founded in September 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill to develop ''League of Legends'' and went on to develop ...

, PlayFab,

Vivox Vivox Inc. is an American communications company that manages communication services in the form of integrated voice chat, Instant Messaging (IM) to online games, virtual worlds and other online communities. It is headquartered in Framingham, M ...

, Grockit,

Gaikai was an American company which provides technology for the streaming of high-end video games. Its technology has multiple applications, including in-home streaming over a local wired or wireless network (as in Remote Play between the PlayStation ...

, RedRobot, Meteor Entertainment, thatgamecompany, and

NaturalMotion NaturalMotion Limited is a British video game development company with development offices in London, Brighton and Birmingham. Founded in November 2001 as a spin-out company from Oxford University, NaturalMotion specialises in creating animatio ...

Personal life

Mitch Lasky is the father of musician and former

YouTuber A YouTuber is a content creator and social media influencer who uploads or creates videos on the online video-sharing website YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006 ...

Benjamin "

Quadeca Benjamin Fernando Barajas Lasky (born October 2, 2000), better known by his stage name Quadeca (formerly QuadecaX8), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. Lasky began on the Internet by uploading rap songs, music videos ...

" Lasky.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lasky, Mitch American computer businesspeople University of Virginia School of Law alumni Harvard College alumni Living people American venture capitalists 1962 births