Neon River has a strong track record of working with high profile entrepreneurs in the technology and games sectors:
James Watt
CEO and Founder, Social Tip - Co-founder (and former CEO), BrewDog
(A) Background
James is best known for co-founding BrewDog and scaling it from scratch into one of the world’s most recognised craft beer brands, growing the business to £300m+ in revenues. Before BrewDog, he took an unconventional path - including time as a deep-sea captain - and has since become one of the UK’s best-known modern entrepreneurs.
(B) Current business
James is the CEO and Founder of Social Tip, a consumer app that helps brands turn their customers into influencers, rewarding everyday people for posting authentically about products they love and helping brands build hype through scalable word-of-mouth marketing.
(C) Our work
Neon River partnered directly with James on a Chief Technology Officer search, appointing Louay Akkad as CTO. Louay brought a rare mix of early-stage builder energy and modern consumer product experience - including being an early engineering hire at Urban Massage, technology and cloud transformation work at McKinsey, and senior engineering leadership at Fresha, where he helped rebuild and scale a B2C marketplace product.
Rob Small
President and Founder, Miniclip
(A) Background
Rob is the President and Founder of Miniclip, one of the most successful consumer games companies to emerge from Europe. Under his leadership, Miniclip scaled from an early web games platform into a global mobile games powerhouse, becoming a category-defining business in free-to-play gaming.
(B) Current business
Today, Miniclip is a $1bn+ revenue mobile games group, owned by Tencent and operating at global scale across live games, publishing and platform partnerships. The company is widely regarded as one of the market leaders in mobile gaming, combining long-lived franchises with disciplined live-operations execution.
(C) Our work
Neon River has worked closely with Rob over a number of years, completing 11 senior leadership placements for Miniclip across multiple functions. One notable engagement was the appointment of Miniclip’s Chief Marketing Officer, supporting the business through a critical phase of international growth and portfolio expansion.
Michael Acton-Smith OBE and Alex Tew
Co-founders, Calm
(A) Background
Alex Tew is best known for creating The Million Dollar Homepage, a breakout early internet success, and later founding PopJam, before co-founding Calm in 2012. Michael Acton-Smith OBE previously founded Firebox.com and then Mind Candy, best known for Moshi Monsters, a hugely successful online world. Michael was awarded an OBE for his contributions to the creative industries.
(B) Current business
Calm is the developer of the world’s leading sleep, meditation and relaxation app, with 180m+ downloads, alongside an expanding product ecosystem. Calm is also a games business through Calmlings, a new mobile game that extends the Calm experience into interactive play and digital companionship.
(C) Our work
Neon River has partnered directly with the founders on two senior hiring projects. We supported Calm in appointing a VP Product, and separately delivered a search for a senior technology leader where we aligned on VP Engineering as the right title for the role (rather than CTO), reflecting the scope and operating needs of the organisation.
Across consumer apps, games and founder-led technology businesses, Neon River works most closely with entrepreneurs when the hire is senior, sensitive or business-critical.
Whether supporting a global mobile games leader, a category-defining consumer app, or an early-stage founder building something new, our role is the same: to act as a trusted partner on leadership hires that shape the direction of the business.
“At Miniclip, we’ve worked with Peter and Neon River on several important hires over the years, and we’ve always been very happy with the experience. I’d recommend Neon River as one of the very best executive search firms in the market.”