Founded in Perth, Australia in 2005, TheBroth.com quickly became a web community for users to interact with each other, play games, and create collaborative art. With the advent of Facebook’s developer platform, the company created a series of applications and games that quickly saw TheBroth become a leader in social games. In 2008, the company relocated its headquarters to San Francisco while still maintaining its strong R&D center in Australia. The company is self-funded and profitable.
In 2009, TheBroth's farming game Barn Buddy became a top 10 game on Facebook and marks the company's entry into persistent virtual worlds that blur the lines between casual games, social games and massively multiplayer online games (MMOG).
Markus Weichselbaum - CEO
Markus Weichselbaum is the founder and CEO of TheBroth. Markus is responsible for the direction and vision of TheBroth company. As the visionary and creative driving force of the team, most new features you find on TheBroth are Markus's doing.
Markus has a PhD in neuroscience and worked as a research scientist before founding TheBroth to focus on developing innovative internet projects. On Barn Buddy, Markus likes to plant peaches.
Sue Zann Toh - CFO
Sue Zann acts as the Chief Financial Officer at TheBroth. She is responsible for all aspects of the companies finances including producing financial reports, projections and forcasts, budgeting, accounts receivable and payable.
Greg Russell - Human resources
Greg is responsible for finding and hiring all of the genius talent we have at TheBroth. Greg's been recruiting in San Francisco for over 10 years and is CEO of MitchelLake Consulting, a boutique recruitment firm that specializes in staffing startups from the inside. His favorite thing to do in Barn Buddy is to steal tomatoes from his friends. Greg is passionate about All Blacks rugby and the San Francisco Giants. Drop him a line if you've got some scary talent and love startups.
John - Director of Game Development
John has worked in the Bay Area on games and other interactive experiences for the last thirteen years. Prior to TheBroth, John was Director of Product Management at a Silicon Valley startup. John held various management positions at Sega and Nokia Multimedia, and worked to create global, online gaming communities such as the Sega Dreamcast Network and Nokia's cellphone-based gaming service; N-Gage Arena. John holds a BSE in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and was awarded a Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship at Stanford University. At TheBroth, John will maintain and expand Barn Buddy and other social media applications, even if it's a tough row to hoe.
Tony - Creative Director
Tony has been a passionate gamer ever since his first Atari 2600 back in 1982. He has a bachelors degree in graphic design from Flagler College and a masters of science in Interative Entertainment from the University of Central Florida. Recently he was the art director at an online educational video game company located in Orlando Florida, where he helped build the company as a founding member. He was also the art director of an early 2000's alternative lifestyle website. He has also freelanced as a digital artist in Austin, Seattle, New York and Orlando. Tony loves the collaborative environment that is TheBroth. His dog is also currently hungry so it’s a good time to steal his crops on Barn Buddy.
David - Developer and graphic artist
David is responsible for integrating design and function. As both a gifted graphic artist and a competent developer, David's skills are invaluable in implementing new features. Well versed in all modern web technologies including but not limited to Ajax, CSS, DHTML, Javascript, MySQL, PHP and XHTML, he is a formidable workforce and is responsible for moving us forward through our extremely large and ever-growing to-do list, turning new and exciting TheBroth features into a well-implemented reality.
Dolph - Developer and network administrator
Dolph has become a powerhouse of experience, ability and skill. Dolph is responsible for keeping the ever-improving engine cores of TheBroth's applications running. When something doesn't work, we all turn first to Dolph, very much to his dismay.
Saipetch - Engineer
Saipetch has been working as a software engineer in the Bay Area for five years. After receiving her Masters degree in Computer Science from San Francisco State University, she went to work for a social media marketing firm where she helped build an evolving back-end infrastructure for their social media marketing platform. At TheBroth, Saipetch will serve as a software engineer to help expand their social media applications. On Barn Buddy, she loves planting strawberries!
Kit - Action Script Developer
Kit comes to TheBroth having worked as a flash developer in Los Angeles for five years. As a member of some wonderful Flash development teams he has had the fortune and privilege of working on a great number of high profile flash sites and applications from James Bond's 007.com to Katie Couric's cancer foundation, StandUp2Cancer.org. Kit graduated in 2003 from Lawrence University with a degree in Physics and his favorite feature in Barn Buddy is the one currently under development on his desk right now!
Anthony - Project Coordinator
Anthony hails form Cincinnati Ohio where he grew up on corn and video games. When it came time for him to pick a career the only logical choice (besides growing corn) was to make games. So he set off to Athens Ohio where he studied the games industry and project management. Along the way he made some great friends, and gained a thirst for the west coast, which prompted his search for jobs in Northern California. He found his way into a San Francisco game studio for a summer of internship fun, and stumbled upon The Broth during his time there. He now continues his career as Project Coordinator here at The Broth.
Jonathan - Digital Artist
Jonathan has worked as an illustrator and graphic designer for over 14 years. With a diverse range of styles, he is able to create work from cute and whimsical to cutting edge and punk rock. His favorite thing to grow on Barn Buddy is pomegranates because he likes to be cutting edge.
Ju - Junior Artist
Ju is one of the most international members of TheBroth. She has lived in Korea, China, Sri Lanka and the USA. Her love for video games started when she received her first GameBoy. Ju graduated from The Art Institute of California- San Francisco’s Game Art and Design program with Bachelor of Science. Ju enjoys every minute of her time at TheBroth. She loves planting carrots on Barn Buddy.
Teri - Junior Artist
Teri is a born and raised SF bay area girl who grew up with a passion for art, animation and games. Teri graduated from the Art Institute of California-San Francisco’s Media Arts and Animation program with a Bachelor of Science. She believes that you shouldn’t work to earn money, but to work to learn and improve different assets of yourself. Every day presents new challenges, and Teri aims to tackle them.
Joshua - Game Designer
Josh is an artist and designer. Josh has been a gamer ever since he could hold a controller in his hands. Josh mostly grows bananas in hopes of luring Donkey Kong to his farm.
Jason - Game Designer
Jason has been an avid gamer longer than he can remember. His previous projects include the original Fallout and the children's MMO Emerald Island. He has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from California State University, Sacramento and a broad range of skills in design, programming, and operations. Think "duct tape".
Owen - Software Engineer
Owen has been building web and e-commerce applications for 14 years, and still learns something new every day. He has always wanted to work on games and is happy to have found a place that combines those areas. He graduated from UC San Diego with a degree in Cognitive Science. At The Broth, Owen is concentrating on PHP and MySQL and his favorite thing to grow is Grape Vines.
Phuong - Digital Artist
Phuong is a digital artist who grew up with a healthy diet of game consoles and arcade machines. He spends most of his time chained down to his tablet and mouse throwing his special blend of ingredients into the Broth. The plant he's most proud of is his grapes so don't go stealing them!
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