A successful entrepreneur, Shawn has spent over fifteen years inventing, designing, founding, building, staffing, funding, managing, marketing, buying, growing, selling – and sometimes even not-fucking-up – Internet companies. Shawn cut his teeth hacking on TRS-80s in the early 1980s, but was lured over to the business side of the equation by the mid 90s. His CTOs, demonstrating keen insight, rarely let him code any more. Shawn has nearly 25 years of experience causing trouble in all manner of technology firms. In 2010 he launched his latest venture play140 which creates social games with words. Shawn was the Managing Director of TechStars Boston for the 2009 and 2010 programs. He is also the founder/CEO of TrustPlus, created in 2005 to build the reputation layer of the Internet. In 1996, he founded Genetic Anomalies, the first company to commercialize virtual property on the Internet which went on to sell tens of millions of pieces of virtual property. He has also held positions at THQ Inc., international strategy consultancy Monitor Company, and Feld Technologies. Over the years, in addition to the nineteen TechStars Boston ’09 and ’10 alums, Shawn has served as an investor, adviser, and/or director to Arcadios, CoreStreet, DigitalShares, Govedo, iFactory, Kefta, Red 5 Studios, RideOnTime, Speranza Systems, TradeVine, Troba, Virtual Rendezvous, Voxx, Xigig, and xLr8d Brands. He received his BA in Computer Science from Brandeis University and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Boston University.
Shawn Broderick
Chief Troublemaker, play140 Inc.