The story
Founded by Andrew Paradise on Apr 1, 2012.1
Skillz was founded in 2012 by Andrew Paradise and Casey Chafkin in Boston, though the company's headquarters is now located in Las Vegas.
Through different rounds of funding, Skillz has raised $53 million from venture capitalists including Liberty Global, Telstra, Accomplice, Wildcat Capital, as well as the owners of the New England Patriots, Milwaukee Bucks, New York Mets, and Sacramento Kings.
In 2016, the company launched bracketed tournaments on the platform.
In December 2017, Skillz hired its one hundredth full-time employee. As of September 2017, 33% of Skillz's engineering team were women.
In April 2018, Skillz doubled its revenue run-rate to $200 million in nine months, with more than one million tournaments per day. At the same year in September, the revenue rate grew to $400 million.
In 2019, the company held a contest for mobile esports games developers with $25,000-prize for the winner to traffic to the game, with launch and optimization services provided by Skillz business and game design experts.
In February 2021, Skillz and the NFL partnered to develop a new NFL-themed mobile game.
In August 2021, the company partnered with multiplayer tech company Exit Games with permanent access to the company's technology, and invested $50 million for a minority stake in Exit Games.
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In 2021, Skillz generated over $2 billion in gross marketplace volume, over 3 million monthly active users, and hosted an average of over 6 million daily tournaments, including 1.5 million paid entry daily tournaments offering over $100 million in prizes each month.
In February 2024, Skillz was awarded a $42.9 million judgement against rival AviaGames for patent infringement.
From Wikipedia’s article on Skillz (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8