At the end of the day, its still just people making videos, then they get monetized directly or through advertising, or some way. Again, without deprecating our core product. So you started in finance? So I had focused in particular with distressed-asset businesses that were ripe for technology disruption for turnaround. Under 30 class of 2020. view profile. Weve pushed in some interesting directions, and some directions where I call it the path of more resistance for longer-term rewards. For example, at the University of Connecticut, athletes compete in basketball, hockey and baseball, among other traditional sports. Prize pool is not a driver for revenue. Were a startup, and every dollar counts, every dollar relates to how we continue to survive. Evil Geniuses boasts sponsorships from Monster Energy, Xfinity, AMD and Twitch among others. Those are edtech bucks. Wanna follow Nicole LaPointe Jameson's net worth? AboutPressCopyrightContact. I mean, thats a big investment against an audience that is potentially fixed against people who are interested in League of Legends. Women arent going to live with men in a house forever; are not going to do that job. HOW DO I GET PUSHUPS LIKE YOURS?!?!?! But weve moved into spaces where were either a first mover or the only mover. News 2022 Video 2021 Video Podcast Photo Gallery. The fandom globally is massive. But you have a competitive Valorant team, you have a competitive League of Legends team, it cost you a lot of money to get that slot in League of Legends, right? We kind of just keep that for the fan excitement. That also exists in esports. So I read a report somewhere that for Evil Geniuses to buy into a League of Legends franchise costs almost $30 million. If you look at EG we tease that as a first-world problem. I worked in private equity. Now 27, LaPointe Jameson is the CEO of Evil Geniuses, a major esports organization, where shes shattering stereotypes and creating an inclusive environment. And when you have people with compelling stories that speak to you as a consumer, EG is the voice of the people in gaming, and no other team has taken that stance before. If esports is only a certain demographic of people, the space is screwed. Was that an avenue of expansion for you? I was a triple first in terms of esports team CEOs: race, gender, and age. We also do quarterly harassment and good communication skills training through a third-party vendor. I started at EG with eight people; we just hit 150 people that fall under that vision as well, and like to support that space, so its been good for us. And so the most we can do, again, by showing that being a values-forward esports team, sticking to our guns around our mission, and showcasing competitive excellence, can hopefully push in authentic ways rather than force people to confront something they dont want to confront, to bring positive change. Can your players monetize their celebrity independently of you? We focus a little differently. So when we have to, as we do, have to pivot, change our course, throw something out and go in the complete opposite direction, we have a diligent framework of why we did what we did, so we know how to course-correct when that has to happen 19 times a day. But then also, were a sports team and so our humans, our players, our athletes are also the crux of our decision. She has also stabilized a company. Gamer. Its a fair question to ask because its a little nonlinear. So our players are celebrities in their own rights and realms and that helps the team. Its a bit more junior, where every person really has a voice and matters, still, in esports. Did you feel like an outsider coming into the role? But today, I would be a bad fiduciary to my investors if I said, Yeah, lets just go athletics. So we were able to activate and support brands, bringing their awareness to different spaces through what we offer in activations. Evil Geniuses has a stronger digital and social media presence, reaching around 70 million people each month, she said. In the next five years, its a mix between the league revenue share, so we get a cut of the work that Riot does, which is excellent. But also on the bright side: unlike traditional sports, the beauty of esports you saw it during COVID: pro sports leagues stopped. We have a very sticky product by being digital and by being more flexible and how we engage, excite, and monetize the fan and consumer. And so it is something we definitely have to evaluate a lot around what teams do we enter. And if you include mobile gaming, more people play games than not. So those are your deals, not their deals? And so theres quite a bit of variation in their interests and their passions. Okay, that makes me feel better maybe not, actually. They, of course, get a cut of that, but the onus is on us to manage and support, and sell against, and brand build for them, essentially. / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your inbox daily. Its the storylines, and its the people. Lets sift through empirically, look at key metrics that we know align in-game, and build a roster from there.. I was reading an essay by a VC named Matthew Ball. Among the platforms ready to capitalize is Evil Geniuses, which has grown its own revenue sixfold in the two-and-a-half years since Jameson took the helm as CEO. This is very much an investment story. When you say that leads to different back-end decisions, pull that apart. A native of Greenwich, Connecticut,[2] LaPointe Jameson attended Columbia University in New York City, graduating in 2016. Nicole LaPointe Jameson, CEO, EVIL GENIUSES. Again, there are other teams that have just leaned fully into Twitch, have leaned fully into YouTube. Its almost a due diligence process in itself to know what developers are supporting the league in a way that helps brands grow. Our first #valorant international LAN started with a ! Media. We realized we could white-label those tools and sell them direct. Evil Geniuses CEO Nicole LaPointe Jameson wanted to emphasize that the new Valorant roster was not put together with diversity in mind. Which one of those is growing the fastest? But that also fuels our purpose and at EG (Evil Geniuses). And shes super into Vogue and fashion. Now 27, LaPointe Jameson is the CEO of Evil Geniuses, a major esports organization, where she's shattering stereotypes and creating an inclusive environment. So we really focused on bringing peripheral revenue streams into the business to support what we do but that also dont deprecate from the core product of who we are. [3][4] During the summer of her junior year, she received a job offer to join Chicago-based investment firm PEAK6. Listen to Decoder, a show hosted by The Verges Nilay Patel about big ideas and other problems. I mean, Ive watched a League of Legends match and Ive played this game five times and I have no idea whats going on, right? That sounds like a lot to deal with. Last year, you removed two players from the roster for their conduct. Before that, you worked at PEAK6, which is an investment company. $250M increase in valuation in less than two years. And actually going back to the developers question, thats actually one of the metrics we look at when we evaluate developers to work with is: who makes their broadcast, their education, and their social materials accessible to a broader audience? FaZe Clan is probably a good example because in the bimodal spectrum of how the esports teams operate, theyre full-on entertainment. Of course, EG [is a] Seattle, Pacific Northwest, esports team, which is great. The biggest problem we face is breaking down the perception of gamers are alt-right dudes in a basement. Its not. There are parts that feel like what a tech CEO would have to do. Bumpouts in Byram? Do you think that tension is unresolvable? So that agency roster scouting play, I think, is an untapped area we might want to tap into. And so if you irritate half of the country because youre continuing to talk about diversity and inclusion, you did a podcast episode on Black Lives Matter. See you again soon, Brazil! Esports Insider sat down with Nicole LaPointe Jameson, CEO of Evil Geniuses, to discuss the need to change the logo, as well as learnings that have been implemented into this "final phase" of the organisation's rebrand. As a lawyer, I can say that. But I cant complain, she added. We just hired some heavy hitters from both gaming and entertainment to help boost our digital marketing and digital social. Were partnering with universities to build out their esports programming, curriculum, facilities, whatever it is. [9][10] The organization also doubled their staff count and opened new offices in Seattle and Los Angeles within a year of LaPointe Jameson's tenure. https://t.co/dzuLhaRiEu, RT @EvilGeniuses: POV: You're watching us Exhibit our Evil at the MoPoP Thank you for joining us! Now she is a CEO in the esports industry", "This 26-year-old CEO is helping esports grow up", "Evil Geniuses acquired by PEAK6 Investments", "Evil Geniuses' new mastermind must reckon with the past to chart a future course", "100 People Transforming Business - Nicole LaPointe Jameson", "Evil Geniuses acquires Echo Fox LCS Franchise Slot; NRG Esports CS:GO Roster", "Evil Geniuses CEO Nicole LaPointe Jameson on embracing "Evil" and pivoting through pandemic", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicole_LaPointe_Jameson&oldid=1097751696, American people in the video game industry, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 12 July 2022, at 13:49. I had worked for the past five years at an investment firm called PEAK6 Investments, which does a lot of I call it a mixture of private equity meets family office. We find documented incidences of either repeated behavior or something that breaks the code of conduct very explicitly, and then we have to make a decision based on that. But it was very iconoclastic to what had been done and really pushed the envelope on a lot of different fronts. Become an industry insider. I mean it completely makes sense why we're talking about EA Sports in conjunction with this F1 event. It's our way of honoring the innovators, the leaders, the public figures and the game changers whose work from the past year is breaking down barriers and paving the way for the next generation. You make a lot of money owning the Lakers, maybe you sell concessions, you sell tickets, you have all these ancillary things around the Lakers. Put your money where your mouth is, and thats fine. Whats the word Im looking for? Now that youre in this space, is it a goal of yours to bring in other women and POC? And thats part of the culture of gaming. Give me a sense of that journey. So depending on the decision, do we bring in a certain partner, will our fans like it? And it was a good wake-up call and call to action of how can we always continue to optimize and do better? But its been a long process, with challenges and setbacks along the way. Nicole LaPointe Jameson. She said she also enjoyed the towns proximity to New York City while growing up. And so weve actually spent a lot of energy making sure we did a lot of provisions. But its not always safe; its not always tolerant to me or any other minority by whatever way you slice the pie, she said. And oh, look, Tableau is doing this. Everybody, put yourself in that headspace. Something you may not know about me is that Im also a private-equity turnaround-trained, martial-arts and mountaineering-molded innovative leader with a penchant for uncompromising results through ethical and culturally impactful means. Welcome to Decoder. And so theres often competing universes under one big broad bucket of esports, [which] yields very different results on the back-end infrastructure and supporting businesses. Just in two years, right, we are a tech and gaming company that is 52 percent female leadership and management positions. Some of the income comes from showing up at competitions or from winning part of the prize pool at tournaments. Is that true? Nicole LaPointe Jameson does, but she made it so much cooler when she rose to a final-level boss in the industry. People with committed relationships are not going to do that job. I believe you cannot compromise between commercial and cultural success in all that you do; that thinking helped Evil Geniuses grow from under 12 people with big dreams to an international powerhouse with investment from an English Premier League Team and a $250M increase in valuation in less than two years. You can find a collection of my speaking engagements, media moments, a way to connect with me on shared passions, topics, and more! Because we dont like to do things just for the optics of it. When I had enough wins under my belt, I focused on my own investments under PEAK6, which revolved around gaming, AR, VR, and tech. So our employment agreements are a little different. His first gift to LaPointe Jameson was a Pokmon game on Gameboy Color, and she immediately fell in love. That will work. Because it wont, unfortunately. Youre a CEO, call them out. We like being punchy, bold, and authentic voices, and create a lot of content and programs beyond just our athletics, like collegiate and education programs, data and analytics programs, and spicy engaging content to excite and inspire our people. So were really strategic around who we even partner with in terms of community partnerships. At the heart of it all, I'm building a winning brand that reflects gaming culture's diverse, vibrant audience. I came from finance, and before that data science. How comfortable are you with how much of your business requires China? Evil Geniuses (EG) is an American esports organization based in Seattle, Washington.Founded in 1999, the organization has fielded players in various fighting games, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, Fortnite Battle Royale, Halo, League of Legends, StarCraft II, Rocket League, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, and World of Warcraft. This button displays the currently selected search type. And heres some good examples, right? And not to sound overly annoyingly corporate, but it starts from our mission, vision, and values and quite literally, again, going back to my annoying data decision-making, right? Well, so this is something I think about a lot, especially in the creator ecosystem, which we pay a lot of attention to; its new, but the cultural product its making is maybe not new, right? Its the education component of why being an infrastructure business and being legitimately supported for very short-term gains-focused youth, which tends to be our athletes is harder for us to navigate and manage. [7] This made her the first African American woman to lead a major esports organization. Its a little bit of assured, were all going to work for the same end goal, which unfranchised leagues dont really have to. So heres the next big difference with a traditional sports team. Its usually family, or I was born in a location, or I live in a location, so Im a fan of the locations team. Ask the coach, who do they know thats good, and build from there. We said, Screw that. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. The first is, five years ago, if you were an esports athlete, you lived in someones house with all your other teammates, and you played for 12 hours a day with not much infrastructure, oversight, or sometimes not even for pay, to make it big. I dont think anyones done it perfectly yet. And it requires us to be very quick-footed and have a lot of support to make sure we can navigate those scenes appropriately. Normally the ad cost for an Instagram ad post is based on the number of followers on the account. The two will pull back the curtain on how esports organizations are run at the professional level and how fans and brands can get involved in the truly global phenomenon. It is almost a loss-leader. Jobs Number of Current Jobs 1 When I came into the space, I was nervous. I left PEAK6, rolled into Evil Geniuses, and havent looked back since. 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