Kevin Chou

Kevin Chou
Nationality American
Occupation video game executive and entrepreneur

Kevin Chou is an American video game executive and entrepreneur, and is best known as co-founder and CEO of video game company Kabam. Chou is also the co-owner of Generation Gaming who own the Overwatch League team Seoul Dynasty.

Chou grew up in suburban Los Angeles and was raised by immigrant parents from Taiwan.[1]

Career

Chou graduated from UC Berkeley and started out on Wall Street, joining Deutsche Bank to advise public tech companies on M&A and Finance.[2] He eventually moved from Deutsche Bank to Canaan Partners and worked for Maha Ibrahim, a VC partner at Canaan who would later become an investor and Board member of Kabam.[3] In 2006, Chou started Watercooler, inc. with three co-founders and tried to build a social network for sports, TV, and movie fans that eventually became a platform for fantasy sports. When the business failed to get significant traction, Chou pivoted the company from fantasy sports to Facebook games, launching Kingdoms of Camelot in 2009.[3] Camelot was a multiplayer strategy game where a player established a medieval city and collected resources to grow it over time.[4] Camelot was successful and made a lot of money, pointing the way forward for Watercooler as a game company. Chou renamed the company Kabam in 2010.[5][6][7][8] Kabam's most successful game by revenue was Marvel:Contest of Champions, a free-to-play mobile fighting game launched in 2014.[9] Kabam was sold in pieces to Netmarble and FoxNext in 2017 for a total somewhere between $800 million and $900 million.[3][10][11][12][13]

Generation Gaming

In 2017, Chou alongside Kent Wakeford, his partner at Kabam, established the esports organization KSV (Korea plus Silicon Valley) eSports International.[14] On May 3, 2018, KSV eSports announced they had completely rebranded themselves as Generation Gaming (Gen.G).[15]

Overwatch

In mid-2017 KSV eSports purchased the rights to an Overwatch League franchise in Seoul, South Korea, for a reported $20 million.[16][17] In August, they announced the team name would be Seoul Dynasty and that they had acquired the roster of Korean Overwatch esports team Lunatic-Hai.[18]

Heroes of the Storm

In October 2017, KSV eSports expanded into Heroes of the Storm by acquiring the teams MVP Black and MVP Miracle.[19] Shortly afterwards, MVP Black was rebranded as KSV Black[20] while MVP Miracle had to be released due to dual ownership conflict rules.

League of Legends

In November 2017, they acquired Samsung Galaxy's League of Legends team.[21]

Philanthropy

On March 2, 2017, in the wake of the Kabam sale, Chou and his wife Connie Chen made a donation pledge of up to $25 million to the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business. The contribution was structured as an initial $15 million donation, with a further $5-10 million in potential "step up" donations by 2022. At the time of the donation, it was the largest gift ever made to the school by an alumni under the age of 40[22][23]

References

  1. ↑ http://fortune.com/2013/12/12/the-most-exciting-mobile-gaming-company-youve-never-heard-of/
  2. ↑ "Kevin Chou - Co-Founder & CEO @ Kabam". Crunchbase. Retrieved 2017-11-26.
  3. 1 2 3 "Gaming company Kabam's roller coaster ride to an $800 million exit". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-07-08.
  4. ↑ Tanner, Nicole (2010-04-16). "Facebook Games: Kingdoms of Camelot". IGN. Retrieved 2017-11-26.
  5. ↑ "Watercooler Changes Its Name to Kabam, Focuses in on Deeper Social Games". Retrieved 2017-11-26.
  6. ↑ "www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2016/11/10/most-admired-kevin-chou-kabam-mobile-games-marvel.html". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  7. ↑ "How this startup failed (twice) and still found success". Fortune. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  8. ↑ "GamesBeat Summit: KSV's Kent Wakeford on the explosive growth of esports". VentureBeat. 2018-03-21. Retrieved 2018-07-08.
  9. ↑ "Kabam receives $800 million bid for its best asset: its Vancouver studio". VentureBeat. 2016-10-18. Retrieved 2018-07-08.
  10. ↑ "FoxNext acquires Aftershock, or what is left of Kabam". VentureBeat. 2017-06-06. Retrieved 2018-07-08.
  11. ↑ "Kabam's leaders offer mobile gaming lessons and a bittersweet goodbye | GamesBeat". venturebeat.com. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  12. ↑ Huspeni, Andrea (2017-04-04). "After Three Pivots, This Founder Sold His Gaming Company for $800 Million". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  13. ↑ Spangler, Todd (2016-12-20). "Korea's Netmarble Acquires Bulk of Kabam, Game Studio Backed by Warner Bros., MGM". Variety. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  14. ↑ "Why Kabam cofounder Kevin Chou is diving into esports with Overwatch League's Seoul franchise | VentureBeat". venturebeat.com. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  15. ↑ Vejnovic, Tatjana (3 May 2018). "Seoul Dynasty owners KSV eSports is now Gen.G". Overwatch Wire. Retrieved 8 July 2018.
  16. ↑ "Silicon Valley meets Overwatch: Q&A with Kevin Chou". ESPN.com. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  17. ↑ "Kevin Chou transitions from mobile game leader to Overwatch esports team owner | VentureBeat". venturebeat.com. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  18. ↑ "Overwatch League begins to take shape as KSV Esports unveils Seoul Dynasty | VentureBeat". venturebeat.com. Retrieved 2017-11-26.
  19. ↑ Park, Beom; Bae, Jun-seok (23 October 2017). "Kevin Chou's KSV acquires the prestigious HotS teams, MVP Black and MVP Miracle". Inven Global. Retrieved 8 July 2018.
  20. ↑ "KSV acquires Samsung Galaxy's League of Legends team". ESPN.com. Retrieved 2018-07-08.
  21. ↑ "KSV acquires Samsung Galaxy's League of Legends team". ESPN.com. Retrieved 2017-12-02.
  22. ↑ Siu, Antoinette (7 March 2017). "Wunderkind CEO makes record-setting donation to UC Berkeley". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  23. ↑ "Haas alumnus donates millions to fund new campus hall | The Daily Californian". The Daily Californian. 2017-03-08. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.