Paul Sebastien

Paul Sebastien, born Paul Sebastien Skrowaczewski, is an American musician, producer, composer, and technology executive. He is known for being a founding member, singer and co-writer of techno group Psykosonik. He also composed for many video game soundtracks and worked in-house at Thomas Dolby's company Beatnik, which acquired his music publishing company Power of Seven.

As a technology executive, he has held chief roles at both startups and large companies, spanning Chief Marketing Officer, General Manager, CEO and President roles. He is the son of the late Polish-American composer Stanisław Skrowaczewski.

Early life Sebastien graduated from the Blake School in Minneapolis. in less than a year reaching No. 10 on the Billboard 200, and was included in the 2011 Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition as the "most successful video game spin-off soundtrack album". He hangs the Platinum award in his music studio to this day. these were resequenced for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Ali Lexa.

Other projects In 1994, Sebastien started the music publishing company Power of Seven. He worked on a number of games under this name, including CyClones, and the title themes of Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity, as well as the multimedia content product Hip Clip Music. The following year, Power of Seven was acquired by Thomas Dolby's audio technology company Beatnik (then known as Headspace), although the acquisition was not announced until 1996. This led to Sebastien becoming Headspace's production director, where he was responsible for content production, as well as composing for and managing the Headspace Music Library, and also worked on other multimedia projects. He highly enjoyed working with Dolby at Beatnik, as he was a large fan of his music during his teenage years and both shared common interests including the then-nascent Web, interactive media, windsurfing and other shared interests. As part of Headspace, he served as one of the composers for the game Obsidian.

Sebastien left the company in 1998 and went on to pursue new leadership roles at Silicon Valley startups including Enliven which was acquired by Excite.com in 1999. He also continued work on music and video games projects including Oni, along with fellow ex-Beatnik composer Brian Salter and sound designer Kim Cascone. Other music in the game was composed by Martin O'Donnell in collaboration with Michael Salvatori.

Although Sebastien became known for his work at Silicon Valley and Seattle companies as a technology executive, he continued writing music and eventually formed an electronica/new wave duo with Caesar Filori called Basic Pleasure Model in 2003. During the mid-2000s, they released three singles and also performed as an opening act for Thomas Dolby. The duo released further singles between 2019 and 2020. Sebastien has also released solo tracks, such as "The Turning of Summer" and "Midnight on Reef Island", and in 2022 he released the synthpop track "Summertime (I Don’t Care)".

Business career Following his time at Beatnik with Thomas Dolby, Sebastien pursued new business and marketing leadership roles at Silicon Valley companies (and eventually Seattle, as part of joining the early Xbox division of Microsoft in 2001). In 1999, following the acquisition of online advertising startup Enliven, he was recruited for a marketing leadership role at the startup Zaplet. Two years later, he joined Microsoft, working in multiple leadership roles. He also joined Zipper Interactive in 2005 as an executive who contributed to the success of the SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs games franchise in partnership with Sony; the company was acquired by Sony in 2007. Subsequent companies he worked at include Disney Mobile (via acquisition of startup Tapulous), SugarSync, and T-Mobile (via acquisition of startup ChooChee).

He was then recruited in 2014 to build and lead a new B2B SaaS company for on Udemy, serving as General Manager and co-creator of Udemy for Business. Later, he joined Helpshift in 2017 as a chief marketing officer, followed by Offensive Security in 2019 as Chief Marketing Officer where he helped build and scale the company to global adoption across B2C and B2B. In 2022, he left Offensive Security to join Raoul Pal at finance education platform and media company Real Vision, as its President.

Sebastien has developed an interest in cryptocurrency and Web3. This started in 2013 with bitcoin mining, and in 2017 his friend Mauvis Ledford introduced him to a network of crypto experts.

Personal life Sebastien lives with his wife Julia Sebastien, and they have three children. His father is composer Stanisław Skrowaczewski, who died in 2017.

Discography With Psykosonik Psykosonik (1993) Unlearn (1995)

With Headspace Headspace Music Library V4: Midnight Soundscape (1999) – "Schizo-Trance" Headspace Music Library V6: Backyard Sunset (1999) – with Brian Salter, Thomas Dolby and Kim Cascone Headspace Music Library V8: Dreamflight (1999) – with Kim Cascone Headspace Music Library V9: Dreamflight 2 (1999) – with Blake Leyh and Kim Cascone Headspace Music Library V14: Seethroo (2000) – with Brian Salter Headspace Music Library V18: Backwaters (2000) – with Brian Salter

With Basic Pleasure Model Sunyata (2003) How To Live (2004) Outside (2019) Where Do We Go from Here (2020) Surrender (2020) Ephemeral (2020)

Solo works "Midnight on Reef Island" (2020) "The Turning of Summer" (2021) "Summertime (I Don't Care)" (2022)

Video games Year Title Notes 1994 CyClones composer and sound effects; with Theodore Beale and Kevin Schilder 1995 Marathon 2: Durandal title theme composer 1996 Marathon Infinity title theme composer Tracer composer 1997 Nebula Fighter composer 2001 Oni composer; with Martin O'Donnell, Michael Salvatori, and Brian Salter 2003 NHL Rivals 2004 sound director NHL Fever 2004 sound director 2005 SOCOM 3 U.S. Navy SEALs producer; with Prem Krishnan SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo crosstalk producer; with Prem Krishnan 2006 SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Combined Assault additional producer; with Tony Iuppa and Cade Myers