Rikk Carey

Half Moon Bay, CA

Rikk Carey

Half Moon Bay, CA

Born in Baltimore and grew up in classic Boomer middle-class suburb (see film Dazed & Confused). Attended University of Maryland, received a BS in Civil/Structural Engineering and nearly an MS, when I was accepted into Cornell's Program of Computer Graphics.

Worked hard for 3 glorious yrs in Ithaca--learning computer science, computer graphics, and completing my Master's thesis: "Ray Tracing Textures".

Took my first job w/ Vertigo Computer Animation in Vancouver, Canada. Fell in love with Vancouver and worked too hard for 6 yrs, creating the Vertigo 3D Animation System.

Worked at SGI for 9 years on a variety of fun, sometimes controversial projects: GLdebug, Inventor, VRML, 3D Annotator, 3D Whiteboard, Ricochet Ray Tracer, Cosmo line, etc. Somehow got convinced by Kai Fu Lee to come back to SGI and go down with the Cosmo Ship (sold).

I jumped on the Internet bandwagon in 1998, whiffed at a couple startups, and joined eGroups as CTO. Yahoo! acquired us and I worked at Y! as GM of Music for a short stint.

I worked at Napster for a long summer as a favor to a friend.

Co-founded Plaxo and enjoyed a wild ride for six years. Plaxo was sold to Comcast.

Returned to my roots in computer graphics and started a small online game studio, CloudPlay. Created a turn-based strategy game (early MOBA), ThreshWars.com, built Cafe for Tagged.com, and created an fb game.

While developing ideas for our next game, I met the folks at Tophatter and joined. I designed and helped successfully launch their first iPhone app.

I decided that I wanted to refresh my coding skills and built a game 100% solo (coding, art, design, etc.), XO Football.

In 2016, I co-founded a startup, Ethereal, that created a VR app and platform for social VR. Unfortunately, our market timing was terrible (too early) and we had to move on.

I am quietly looking for a new adventure, preferably in VR, 3d, games or mobile.

  • Work
    • CloudPlay
  • Education
    • Cornell University
    • University of Maryland, Baltimore County
    • University of Maryland, College Park