Andrew Paradise

Andrew Paradise is an American entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Skillz, an eSports company that enables tournaments in mobile games.[1][2]

Andrew Paradise
NationalityAmerican
OrganizationSkillz
TitleFounder

Early life and education

Paradise has said that he learned to program at age 7 by hacking a video game with a hex editor and later wrote his first game in Pascal.[3]

Career

After spending a few years working for venture capital and private equity firms,[4] Paradise left in 2008 to found his first business, Double Picture, a web 2.0 digital media and advertising company. While at Double Picture, Paradise created patent-pending advertising technologies, forged business development partnerships with companies such as Apple, and led the eventual sale of Double Picture to a publicly traded company, MPA, Inc.

In 2010, Paradise then founded AisleBuyer, a virtual shopping assistant which enabled retail customers to bypass checkout lines by allowing them to pay for purchases directly through their mobile devices. The software allowed shoppers to scan bar codes on products, which subsequently enabled them to read product details and customer reviews directly from their smartphones.[5][6] Shoppers could then purchase the products on the spot, choosing between an in-store purchase or home delivery.[7][8] Paradise sold the company to Intuit for a reported price of $80 to $100 million in April 2012.[9][10] The technology eventually became Intuit GoPayment.[11]

In 2012, Paradise, along with fellow AisleBuyer veteran Casey Chafkin, founded Skillz in stealth mode under the name Lookout Gaming.[12] Skillz provides an SDK for mobile game developers that allows users to compete against each other. As of October 2018, Skillz reported hosting 2 million tournaments every day.[13] Founders Casey Chafkin and Andrew Paradise are working to democratize the industry by enabling eSports for everyone.[14]

References
  1. "Skillz brings real-money gaming to the U.S." insidemobileapps.com. Archived from the original on 6 June 2014. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  2. "The Making of an Entrepreneur". forbes.com. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  3. "Startup updates: Lookout Gaming raises $1.3M; BetterLesson gets $3.5M Gates grant". bizjournals.com. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  4. Burns, Mark J. (March 22, 2017). "Skillz CEO Andrew Paradise On Mobile eSports, Investment From Sports Figures Like Luol Deng". SportTechie. Retrieved 21 March 2019.
  5. Burns, Mark J. (22 March 2017). "Skillz CEO Andrew Paradise On Mobile eSports, Investment From Sports Figures Like Luol Deng". SportTechie. Retrieved 6 April 2019.
  6. McGlade, Alan (14 January 2013). "The Making of an Entrepreneur". Forbes. Retrieved 21 March 2019.
  7. "Intuit Acquires Mobile Payments Company AisleBuyer, Will Integrate Into GoPayment, POS Solutions". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  8. "Intuit Acquires AisleBuyer Tech for $80 - $100 Million". bostinno.streetwise.co. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  9. Heun, David (10 April 2012). "Intuit Buys M-Payments Co. AisleBuyer". American Banker. Retrieved 6 April 2019.
  10. "Boston startup AisleBuyer acquired by Intuit". bizjournals.com. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  11. "Intuit Buys AisleBuyer, Self-Checkout App, for Reported $100M". PYMNTS. 10 April 2012. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  12. "Lookout Gaming Takes $1.3M Seed Round To Accelerate Indie Game Revenues". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  13. Gottsegen, Gordon (11 October 2018). "A bigger phone could help you win that esports tournament". CNET. Retrieved 11 April 2019.
  14. "Skillz lets game players win real money". sfgate.com. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
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