I'm currently a Director at Saban Capital Group, a media-focused private equity firm based in Los Angeles. I'm part of the PE team focusing on investments/buyouts in the digital media, mobile, and consumer Internet sectors. The firm has strong expertise and relationships in the media and entertainment worlds benefiting from Haim Saban's decades of media experience including the multi-billion dollar sale of Fox Family Worldwide to Disney.  Saban Capital Group's private equity media buyouts include Univision, and the firm owns and licenses leading IP and brands including the Power Rangers and Paul Frank.

My current investment interests include:

• Over-the-top video: Internet-enabled TVs will disrupt the media ecosystem as content providers start to circumvent MSOs and go "over-the-top" to the TV set. Infrastructure platforms, premium content aggregators, and ad targeting platforms have great potential here.
• Online games: Games have monetized impressively in recent years and created new IP franchises with tremendous upside. We are actively looking across the gaming spectrum including social games, mobile games, casual games, and free-to-play virtual worlds
• Next-generation content creation: Efficient models of online content generation will capture significant ad revenue share from magazines and newspapers in the coming years.  Companies with innovative approaches have a huge market opportunity ahead of them.
• Mobile applications: Smartphone usage and mobile data packages are on the rise, paving the way for unique and novel mobile applications to gain widespread adoption. I'm interested in applications that create a great user experience through location, social, and real-time features.

My early career was focused on building and operating early-stage technology startups. I began my career at D. E. Shaw & Co. as the fourth software engineer in its Boston-based Internet group, where I developed the core technology behind the company’s web brokerage and was a technical sales liaison to Fortune 100 business partners. During my four years at D. E. Shaw, I was promoted from Senior Software Engineer to Vice-President as the business unit grew from 10 to 80 employees and was acquired by Merrill Lynch. I then became the fourth employee at ShockMarket, a Silicon Valley consumer Internet startup that raised $6 million in venture funding. I led engineering, marketing and sales for multiple software product lines.

I received my MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and my EECS degree from UC Berkeley.

E-mail: r_yen (AT) richardyen (DOT) com