This Week in Startups

E1050: PlayVS CEO & Founder Delane Parnell shares his incredible journey from the projects to raising almost $100M to build the esports platform of the future, breaking through as an outsider in tech, using leverage & partnerships to create a moat, his top 5 entrepreneurs & more!

Apr 28, 2020

01:43:00

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Highlights

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Episode notes

Play Versus - Is There a Diversity Advantage?

02:43

The Only Way to Add More Sports Teams to a Sport Is to Add More Schools

02:26

Is It a Toss Between A, Drew a Drop Box or Brian at Rb?

01:26

Introduction

2min

Play Versus Dot Com - What Is It?

2min

How Do You Make Money?

2min

Investoter - Is It a Distraction?

2min

The Only Way to Add More Sports Teams to a Sport Is to Add More Schools

2min

High School Sports in the United States

5min

How Did a High School Person Wind Up Getting a Telephone Store?

2min

How to Grow Sam's Empire From One Store to Many Stores

2min

The Story of Gropon

2min

10.

The First Time You Came to San Francisco

2min

11.

The Damo Pit - Is It Free?

5min

12.

I'm a Jist Kip From Tri, You Know, I'm an Anol

2min

13.

Yo, Yo, Fifty Founders.

3min

14.

Peter Fam, Peter's Shirt Off, and He's Danced

2min

15.

Peter's Got Better Bark on His Brisket Than I Do

2min

16.

The Future of Gaming

2min

17.

I've Never Looked at Him in You, Ishall Mir Ye?

2min

18.

How Do You Interface With Publishers?

5min

19.

Starcraft - League of Legends, Stiff Acu Game a Suck at Leage

2min

20.

Is There a Code of Conduct in School Environment?

2min

21.

New England Patriots Cheat Like the Patriots

2min

22.

The Road, You've Raised Ninety Seven Million Dollars

4min

23.

A, Nd, That's So Lame.

1min

24.

How to Get Into the Poker Industry?

3min

25.

You Know, I'm a Black Person, You Know?

2min

26.

Play Versus - Is There a Diversity Advantage?

3min

27.

How to Hire People of Color

3min

28.

You're Hiring, I'm So Happy, You Just Raised a Lot

3min

29.

The New Challenger at Talent, You Know?

4min

30.

I've Been Eating Lucifers in Alay, and I'm Not Sure if It's a Peta in Detroit Yet.

2min

31.

Are You an Investor in Birder Lim?

1min

32.

We're Moving Cani, We Want to Move Cani

2min

33.

Discord, Ye, I May Not Be That Incredible

2min

34.

I'd Rather Have Twenty % Less Audience

2min

35.

I'm Going to Serve Out as Much as I Can, and I May Retire at Some Point

2min

36.

Travis Calani - The Greatest Os of All Time

3min

37.

The Boar's Goig Will Be Like, Ok, Darre Took This Far, Ye?

3min

38.

How Twitter Trending Topics Work?

2min

39.

I'm a Huge Twitter Fant, and I Think They Should Have Been a Lot Bigger

2min

40.

Having a House of Brands

2min

41.

Is It a Toss Between A, Drew a Drop Box or Brian at Rb?

1min

42.

Is Twitch a Good Business Model?

2min

43.

How Many Streams Would There Be?

2min

44.

Nicks Are Undefeated During Corona

2min

45.

I Think East Sports Is Going to Be Just as Dominant in High School

3min

46.

Go Work at Play Verse

23sec

0:42 Jason intros PlayVS CEO & Founder Delane Parnell
2:59 What is PlayVS, how do they make money & how fast are they growing?
5:37 Attracting investors, leveraging an exclusive contract to scale across US high schools & average hours spent on the platform by players
13:26 Delane shares his backstory, from flipping shoes to owning cell phone stores in high school to getting tickets to the LAUNCH Festival in SF
26:38 How Delane turned LAUNCH Festival networking to deal flow & a job in venture capital
32:52 Meeting Peter Pham at SXSW, moving to LA to start PlayVS
38:16 Delane on his relationship with Michael Ovitz
40:20 PlayVS' go-to-market strategy & relationship with game publishers
45:51 PlayVS being co-ed & giving female gamers a safe environment to play in
51:08 Race in tech & Delane's advice on breaking into the industry as an outsider
55:57 Not taking any checks from firms who hadn't previously backed black founders
59:05 Does Darnell's intentionality about diversity create a talent advantage for PlayVS?
1:06:06 Relief of hiring high-level operators
1:11:41 LA restaurant scene discussion
1:13:39 Bird vs. Lime vs. Uber, pricing model discussion, thought on Travis Kalanick
1:23:10 Top 5 Tech entrepreneurs of all-time
1:33:40 What's going on at Airbnb?