Showbucks

Showbucks is a social app platform that brings face-to-face human interaction back to social apps by combining social video with social games.

Social video (i.e. Socialcam) and social games (i.e. Draw Something) are growing rapidly on mobile devices. However, there is no face-to-face human interation in these "social" apps. Just random video sharing and repetitive gameplay with computer graphics. These "social" apps are turning players into an army of clones.

Showbucks brings face-to-face human interaction back to social apps by combining social video with social gaming technology. We create a series of social apps on iOS and Android that allow you to play with your friends face-to-face on video.

Showbucks is incubated at the Founders Den and Turner Broadcasting's Media Camp. Our investors include Turner Broadcasting and former Chief Marketing Officer and Vice Chair of AOL. Our advisors include MC Hammer and partners of Founders Den.

Founder and CEO Michael Yuen is an award-winning entertainment and technology entrepreneur who started his career creating 3D online games for movies like The Titanic and The Fifth Element. Michael was the founder and CEO of Apptera, a speech and mobile app platform handling over 100M calls per year for Bank of America, Fandango and MovieTickets.com. Apptera was funded by Lightspeed ventures and Walden Capital.

Founder and CEO Michael Yuen is an award-winning entertainment and technology entrepreneur, Michael launched his tech venture creating 3D online games for movies and TV shows including The Titanic, The Fifth Element and Xena - Warrior Princess. He was named a Rising Star by Animation Magazine and won The Grand Prize for SGI's Best 3D Online Content In the World Contest. 

Currently Michael is building Showbucks, a mobile app platform that combine social video with social games. Advisors include the partners of Founders Den and MC Hammer. Turner Broadcasting is an investor.

Michael was founder/CEO of speech application platform Apptera. He designed the first web-based platform for developing and managing enterprise-class speech applications, named SpeechTek Product of the Year. Michael brought in Bank of America as the first customer. Apptera now handles over 100 million calls per year. Customers include BofA, Fandango, Moviefone and MovieTickets.com The company is funded by VC firms Lightspeed and Alloy ventures.

Michael's interests include screenplay writing and filmmaking. His romantic comedy "Spaghetti vs. Noodle" won The Best Pitch for a Feature Film at the Sundance Producers Conference. CAA represented the project and generated multiple offers to produce the film. Both Quentin Tarantino and Brett Ratner offered to be producers. Michael is a member of the Producers Guild of America.

Michael studied aerospace engineering at UCLA and earned a degree in mechanical engineering. He holds a patent in voice application system.

Additional stealth team members tba!

For consumers: Freemium with in-app purchases. Paid app.

For brands: Sponsorships, promotional campaigns and hosting curated videos.

First to market - first mobile platform to deliver social apps combining social video and social games

Experienced founder - proven serial entrepreneur who founded Apptera

Advanced technology - Patent-pending asynchronous social video gaming system

Established marketing alliance -  celebrities like MC Hammer and media like Turner Broadcasting network