Andrew Paradise

Andrew Paradise is the CEO and Founder of FIRY (NYSE: FIRY), the parent company of Skillz, the leading mobile games platform for fair and fun competition. A pioneer of the idea of skill-based competition, under Paradise’s leadership, Skillz has become an industry leader in mobile gaming.

Paradise has been the founding inventor behind companies in technology sectors ranging from eCommerce to image recognition. His passion for innovation and tech started early. At the age of seven he learned to program by hacking a video game. He began his professional career in private equity and venture capital, but in 2008 pivoted into tech when he founded his first business, Double Picture, an advertising technology firm. He sold the company to MPA, Inc. in 2010.

“Competition is not a game of win or lose. Competition is what sparks possibilities in all of us.”

– Andrew Paradise

In 2010, Paradise founded AisleBuyer, best known for pioneering mobile self-checkout prior to its sale to Intuit in 2012. That same year, along with his fellow AisleBuyer executive Casey Chafkin, he founded Skillz, with the mission of bringing out the best in everyone through competition. The Skillz platform helps developers build multi-million dollar franchises by enabling social competition in their games. Leveraging its patented technology, Skillz hosts billions of tournaments for millions of mobile players worldwide, and distributes millions in prizes each month.

A sought-after thought leader, he has been featured in such outlets as Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Bloomberg, Fast Company, and CNBC. In 2018, he was named to the San Francisco Business Times’ “40 Under 40 Class.” He has also spoken at preeminent conferences including SXSW, CES, and GDC.