Poki has appointed Darrell Stephenson as its new Chief Product Officer (CPO), bringing in a veteran product executive with experience across consumer technology, digital marketplaces, and entertainment. Stephenson joins the web gaming platform as it continues expanding its ecosystem for players, developers, and advertisers.
Before joining the web giant, Stephenson served as Senior Director of Product Management at Delivery Hero, a German food delivery company valued at $1.7 billion, where he led product teams focused on marketplace, transactions, data, and machine learning. Earlier in his career, he held senior product positions at Zalando, contributing to the growth of the company’s Zalando Plus membership program, and spent more than seven years at SoundCloud, overseeing products spanning listener experience, discovery, advertising, and web and mobile platforms.
As Chief Product Officer, Stephenson will oversee Poki’s product strategy as the company advances its mission to “let the world play.” His background in building large-scale consumer products and discovery-driven digital experiences is expected to support Poki’s continued growth across its platform.
Stephenson said he was “incredibly excited” to join Poki, highlighting the company’s mission of creating “the ultimate online playground” with instant access to games for players of all ages.
If you haven’t heard of Poki before, its mission is to let the world play by building the ultimate online playground, offering instant play to kids of all ages around the world. With 100 million players and 500+ game developers, even if you haven’t heard of Poki, there’s probably someone young at heart around you who has.
In my case, my kids convinced me that “duh, everyone knows about Poki,” and after digging in more and meeting with the team, so many things started connecting: my love for the speed and openness of web development, the potential impact of our global reach, and the opportunity to work with a thoughtful, caring team making a truly fun product while putting the safety of our players first.
Looking forward to sharing how we level up Poki for developers, players, and advertisers in the coming weeks and months!
