Private Equity & Venture Capital

Andrew started his career in private equity working for The Watermill Group, a leveraged buyout shop focused on distribution and manufacturing businesses, based out of the Boston area. There he completed his first acquisitions including Latrobe Steel, a company purchased for $215M enterprise value and later sold for $800M. In 2006, he left Watermill to join Fort Washington Capital Partners, working in venture capital investing.^[5]

Double Picture

After spending a few years working for venture capital and private equity firms,^[6] Paradise left in 2008 to found his first business, Double Picture, a web 2.0 digital media and advertising company.^{[citation needed]} In 2009, he sold the business to MPA Inc. a publicly traded company.^{[citation needed]}

AisleBuyer

Paradise founded AisleBuyer in 2009. AisleBuyer a virtual shopping assistant which enabled customers to bypass checkout lines by allowing them to pay for purchases directly through their mobile devices. The software allowed shoppers to scan product bar codes, which subsequently enabled them to read details and customer reviews directly from their smartphones.^[7] Shoppers could then purchase the products on the spot, choosing between an in-store purchase or home delivery.^[8][9] Paradise sold the company to Intuit for a reported price of $80 to $100 million in April 2012.^[10][11] The technology was later renamed to Intuit GoPayment.^[12]

Skillz

In 2012, Paradise and fellow AisleBuyer veteran Casey Chafkin founded Skillz under the name Lookout Gaming.^[13] 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.^[14] Founders Casey Chafkin and Andrew Paradise are working to democratize the industry by bringing out the best in everyone through competition.^[15]

In 2017, Paradise earned No. 1 spot on the Inc 5000 list for Skillz. The company became the first gaming entity ever to top the chart.^[16]

In December 2020, Skillz became the first publicly-traded mobile eSports platform.^[17] Paradise owns 22% of the company.^[18]

In 2020, Andrew Paradise took the third place at the Top-Earning Game CEOs who made $103,321,052 (or $51,660 per hour).^[19][20]