Ed Lu is the Chief Financial Officer at Fandom, the world’s largest gaming and entertainment community platform, backed by TPG, Amazon, and Delta-V. Lu joined Fandom in 2018 and leads the company’s financial and corporate development functions while operating as a strategic partner to the board and the broader executive leadership team. During his tenure, Fandom has grown revenue by more than 3x and has become very profitable four years in a row, with the employee base doubling to 500. Under his leadership, Fandom has acquired three companies and divested one major asset to strategically align with the company’s future growth. Lu is a seasoned executive with 23 years of financial and operational experience and thirteen years as CFO at online gaming and platform companies.
Previously, Lu was the CFO and a member of the Board of Directors at Outpost Games, an audience-interaction gaming platform company backed by Benchmark, Warner Media, Virgin, and Advancit. In addition, Lu was most notably the CFO of mobile gaming and platform technology company Machine Zone from 2011 to 2016, where he raised over $800M in combined financings across equity and debt from JPM, Menlo Ventures, Comerica, and Hercules. During his tenure there, Lu presided over revenue growth from $8M to $1.7B and scaled the company from 30 to 1,000+ employees, including his G&A org of 70 people.
Lu holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in Economics and a M.S. from Stanford University in Management Science & Engineering, with an emphasis in entrepreneurial finance and strategy. He is a strategic advisor across six gaming startups, including ThatGameCompany, and a venture advisor to Makers Fund and Anthos Capital. In addition, Lu is a founding member of F Suite, one of the largest invitation-only national CFO peer communities.