Big Fish Gets New CFO from Amazon

Seattle casual games company Big Fish Games has added a former Amazon.com vice president as its new chief financial officer. David Stephenson replaces Michael Vernon, who left BigFish in May to join fast-growing Seattle daily-deal startup Zulily.

Stephenson worked at Amazon (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMZN]]) for 11 years, most recently serving as vice president of finance for the $15 billion North American retail division. He also previously worked for Procter & Gamble.

Stephenson’s e-commerce experience will certainly come in handy at Big Fish, which sells thousands of casual games online. Games are either produced in-house by Big Fish’s own studio, or by other developers who market their games through the site. The company also has moved into mobile and social games in recent years.

Big Fish raised about $83 million back in 2008, and earlier this year added ubiquitous angel investor Geoff Entress to its board. Casual and social games have become a hot sector recently, with Zynga’s explosive growth and Seattle studio PopCap’s recent acquisition by EA.

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.