Paul Hayes

With a large body of very relevant US experience, Paul Hayes is a tech PR industry veteran who has worked in this specialised area for over a decade. Paul was marketing and PR director of Havok Inc (www.havok.com) and saw the company grow from a start-up in 1998 through to its acquisition by Intel in 2007.

During Paul’s time at Havok, the company expanded from its Dublin base to open offices in San Francisco, San Antonio, Stockholm, Calcutta, Munich and Tokyo. Following its acquisition by Intel Corp, Havok is the premier provider of interactive software and services for digital media creators in the games and film industries.

Subsequent to his role with Havok, Paul was marketing director at DemonWare (www.demonware.net), a company specialising in creating networking software and services for computer game development.

In this case, Paul helped steer the company through their acquisition by Santa Monica-headquartered Activision Blizzard Inc who are global pure-play online and console game publishers with leading market positions in the rapidly growing interactive entertainment software industry.

In both the Havok Inc and DemonWare cases, Paul was centrally involved in positioning the companies with analysts to maximum advantage through effective use of media. As well as trade and online publications including TechCrunch, the type of print media outlets where he placed stories that helped catapult the companies on to investor radars include Forbes; Los Angeles Times; San Jose Mercury News; Wall Street Journal; New York Times; Wired and Red Herring.

Tellingly, Paul has continued to work with the founders of Havok and DemonWare in their subsequent ventures allowing him keep his skills, industry knowledge and contacts up-to-date.

In addition, Paul has managed the presence of Irish tech companies at over 45 trade conferences with these mainly held in the United States and has worked as a consultant to Enterprise Ireland’s US West Coast team in the gaming and Internet sectors. He was also responsible for customer and buyer visits tied to the Academy Awards and Sundance Film Festival in the United States and the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Europe and Asia.

Paul has also managed media tours on the US West Coast for Swiss-based Plastinum Polymer Technologies Corp (www.plastinum.com)