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Paul Winterhalder, 37
bitHeads inc., Co-Founder, Vice-President & Chief Delivery Officer
Education: Bachelor of Computer Science (Honours), University of New Brunswick (1992)
Personal Success Story: Building bitHeads from three guys in their basements to a development army of over 100 resources, including the creation and launch of a new games development division, HeadGames.
Lesson Learned: You need to have alignment with your customer. bitHeads takes great pride in building great products. I’ve learned to identify clients who drive for excellence and won’t compromise on quality. Over the years, I have learned to avoid those customers who don’t have this drive because all it takes is one bad project or unrealistic expectation to impact someone’s credibility. The ideal bitHeads customer wants to bring an excellent product to market, to hit an aggressive market window, at a known budget.
Character Traits: My best traits are my worst. I’m direct, speak my mind, and am not afraid of confrontation for the greater good of the product and the client and/or end user. This really helps to get things done, but it can take some getting used to for some people. You need to have thick skin to work with me – and be on your game.
Greatest professional challenge: Taking the skills we’ve developed in traditional domains (telecom, retail, and wireless software), and applying those techniques to game development. Today, bitHeads’ gaming division, HeadGames, accounts for roughly half of bitHeads’ revenue
Someone else for a day: Batman. He kicks ass, makes no apologies, and gets the girl.
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