Anson Tsai is the Founder and CEO of Cardpool, a gift card exchange marketplace that lets anybody buy, sell, or trade, new or pre-owned gift cards.
Prior to Cardpool, Anson cofounded Anywhere.FM, an online music service that allowed users to upload, play, and discover music, on the web. Anywhere.FM launched in August of 2007 and grew quickly, gathering over 10 million songs from its users, before it was acquired by imeem in January 2008.
Prior to Anywhere.FM, Anson worked at Microsoft where he was a Program Manager and Software Engineer on the Xbox 360 team. He helped productize and develop the XBox User Experience and developer APIs by bringing innovative technologies to the platform. One of his major projects brought digital “face in game” technology into several games including Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas and World of Series Poker. Using this “face in game” technology, gamers could take a picture of their face and have it digitally reconstructed and rendered onto the characters in the game. Thanks to his work, Anson earned a spot in the Microsoft Corporate Bench Program.
Previously, Anson held engineering and product management positions at Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and several game studios. Anson founded his first company in high school where he got his first game published and distributed by Freeverse Software, a major publisher of Console, Mac, PC, iPhone, and iPad games.
Anson earned a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT.
