Andrew Paradise

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]

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]