Casey Chafkin is the Chief Operating Officer at Skillz, the worldwide leader in mobile eSports. As a stats geek turned marketer and the fourth employee at AisleBuyer, Casey is an expert in mobile payments and performance marketing. Casey also worked at CarMax where he re-launched the company’s consumer offering and lead loyalty research.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
Casey’s Co-founder of Skills Andrew Paradise
When business started difficulties overcame:
“at the onset of this the idea was something that was not universally understandable to most of the world. So when we talked to people in 2012 about the tagline ‘esports for everyone’ most of the people we spoke to said I have no idea what esports is. And the people that did know what it was said okay but the esports are not real sports, real sports are sports that involve punching hard, jumping high, running fast. And even if I can wrap my head around the idea that videogames are going to be played competitively as sports you guys are building a mobile competition platform and I think of mobile games something that are played casually, played supermarket checkout lines. There was this idea that mobile could never be electronic sports because it didn’t fit the mould. And I think probably speaking the way I may articulate this is you have to see the future, and we had what I believe was a vision what that future was going to look like, you also have to be willing to accept a lot of people telling you that you are crazy and that future is never going to happen. And we had no shortage of that with a business like Skillz were we were saying the future of competition is Digital and mobile and that in the future not only are videogames going to be played sports but those games are going to be played predominantly people smart phones rather than on desktop computers.” (4 Lines minimum) …[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers Book by Ben HorowitzFavourite Quote:
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second is by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest” Confucius
Recommended Online Resources:
Society for Human Resource Management – Now is a pivotal time for the workplace and workforce as critical issues affecting society impact work. The Society for Human Resource Management SHRM is the world’s largest HR association, with 300,000 members creating better workplaces
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“do not be afraid to admit you don’t know what something means. If you are a technical founder and you are talking to business people who are using acronyms that you don’t understand, if you are a business founder and were talking to technical people who are using jargon that you have absolutely no idea what it means…. And they can be a temptation to assume that that person you are talking to is really smart because you can’t understand the things that they are saying but my advice is that you are really smart. And so if you are talking to someone they should be able to explain even the most complex things to you in terms that you can understand and you will learn the information but more importantly you will know if they are full of shit for lack of a better word. It is the ultimate test because you should be able to understand almost any concept and a smart person should be able to put it in terms that you can understand. Three of four times sometimes someone will say something and I will say ‘I am sorry it can you say that one more time I am not sure I follow’ and they will say it again, and I will say ‘gosh perhaps it’s just me here I’m sorry I’m being so dense but I am still not sure that I follow can you explain that one more time.’ And I will keep doing that until I understand something because you can’t afford to make decisions by just assuming that someone who says something that you can’t understand is just smart” …[Listen for More]
More About Casey Chafkin:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“What the culture of get rich quick does to our people is Our young people look for quick answers and solutions” Sunday Adelaja
Other Quotes From the Chat with Casey Chafkin:
- “there’s a lot of glamour in being the inventor and being the person who conceives of the idea that is going to change the world. I’m okay with that glamour not accruing to me and me not being the person that came up with that idea. I just want to find and work on those transformative ideas. I want to be a part of forming a new industry and creating that future but I don’t care if I’m the first person that thought of it not”
- “when you have someone who is just as crazy as you are working on that shared future that in of itself makes it hard to quit because you are both feeding off the energy of the other person and feeding off this innate desire not to let the other person down”
- “your human capital is the most valuable investment that you are going to make”
- “unless your business is increasing total GDP for the world you are going to be taking dollars from another business, you are going to be competing… and you might be directly competing with another business, you might be indirectly competing with another business but thinking about where is that money going to come from and really tracing that value chain to make sure that you truly believe you have a credible right to win”
- “don’t be afraid to admit that you don’t know the answer to something…. You are much more likely to get the right answer if you embrace the fact that you don’t know something and embrace that uncertainty and ask questions”
- “now what you are trying to do and what you are not trying to do”
- “if you are purely responsive in your work it’s very very hard to build. But there is an endless amount of work to be responsive to so you have to purposely ignore certain problems, certain opportunities to prioritise the ones that really matter”
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