Skillz (company)
Skillz is an online mobile multiplayer video game competition platform that is integrated into a number of iOS and Android games. Players use it to compete in competitions against other players across the world. History. Skillz was founded in 2012 by Andrew Paradise and Casey Chafkin in Boston, though the company's headquarters is now located in San Francisco. 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 . By June 2015, Skillz had launched 550 games and partnered with 1,100 game studios. In December 2017, Skillz's growth rate was 50,000%. In the same year, Skillz hired its one hundredth full-time employee. As of September 2017, 33% of Skillz's engineering team were women. Software. Developers are able to use the Skillz platform to turn a mobile game into an eSport. Skillz currently has 18 million users registered on the platform and around 13,000 developer partners. As such, Skillz has hosted over 800 million tournaments. On a daily basis, Skillz runs around two million tournaments per day , for games such as Solitaire Cube, Bubble Shooter, and Dominoes. Of its users, roughly half are men and half are women. Players are matched with one another based on their skills. The Skillz platform is also able to "generate gameplay clips and highlights", allowing for the recording and broadcasting all of its gameplay. Games. There are games that have the Skillz multiplayer platform integrated onto them. Tether Studios is one such developer of Skillz games, which used the Skillz platform to add a cash-rewarded competition element to their Solitaire Cube game, leading to increased player retention. Another game that  uses Skillz is Outplay's Bubble Shooter League.