Mika Salmi (born 16 November 1965) is a Finnish-American entrepreneur in technology and media.
Biography
Mika Salmi is a pioneer in the creative and technology industries, founding AtomFilms – a forerunner in short-form, user-created content – in 1998, preceding YouTube by several years. He also ran the internet's most popular casual games web sites, Addicting Games, and Shockwave and built one of the first sports tracking apps. He has discovered Grammy, Oscar, and Emmy recognized artists, and has been profiled in dozens of trade, business and lifestyle publications and is a voting member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.[1]
Salmi was CEO and founder of Atom Entertainment, AtomFilms, Shockwave, and Addicting Games – which together were ranked in the top 20 most popular entertainment websites and had over 28 million monthly active users.[9]Sequoia Capital, led by Michael Moritz, was the lead investor in Atom Entertainment,[11][12] which was purchased by Viacom for $200 million in 2006.[11] From 2006 to 2009, Salmi promoted new media as president of global digital media for MTV Networks/Viacom. At a time of change for the media industry, Salmi is credited with helping MTV transition to digital.[13]
Salmi also created MadRaces in 2010, one of the first sports gaming apps, which he sold to Betaworks.[16] Later, he became CEO of CreativeLive, a live video education company.[17][18] Following that, he served as senior advisor to The Raine Group.[19] Today[when?] Salmi is Managing Partner at the European venture capital firm Lakestar, known for investments in Airbnb, Blockchain, Glovo, Public, Revolut, and Spotify.[20] He served on the board of international business school INSEAD, where he earned his MBA, and spearheaded the opening of its first location in the United States.[21]