Why this startup returned all its ICO money and started from scratch

Esports is bigger and more popular than ever, with its total revenue expected to hit US$900 million by the end of 2018 – that’s roughly a 38.2 percent year-on-year increase. The viewership is staggering too, with 380 million esports viewers around the world this year.

Pak Hou Chau, founder and CEO of Gamico

That said, earning money playing video games, let alone becoming a professional esports athlete, remains a path that’s attainable only by a select few. But if Gamico founder and CEO Pak Hou Chau gets his way, more people can take this road.

Tech in Asia caught up with Pak to find out the story behind Gamico, how an initial coin offering almost backfired on the startup, and why he had to return the ICO funding – all US$150,000 of it – that the team painstakingly raised.

Get good to get paid

Founded in early 2018, Gamico is the brainchild of the 22-year-old Pak. The startup’s core belief is simple: If you are good at something, then you should be rewarded for it – even if your forte is playing video games.

Here’s how it works: If you deem yourself to be an above-average FIFA 19 player and would like to challenge someone to a best-of-one match, the first thing you do is to log on to Gamico’s channel on the Discord app, a voice and text chat for gamers. Think of Discord as an upgraded version of mIRC, an internet relay chat client for Windows from the 1990s.

Once there, Gamico’s chatbot – aptly named Leeroy, a World of Warcraft reference – will kick in and hook you up with another user who wants to play the same game and wager the same amount of money. Both players will then go to the game, challenge each other to a match, then report the results back to Leeroy.

Gamico’s chatbot Leeroy matches players via the Discord app. In the future, Gamico’s goal is to make this process fully automated.

Usernames of participating players are exchanged via Leeroy, so that the match can begin in the game itself.

The wagers are essentially Gamico’s revenue model. Players can bet any amount between US$2 and US$500 per game. The total contributions of both players will go to a prize pool, and Gamico takes a 10 percent cut. The remaining 90 percent goes to the winner of the best-of-one match. This means that anybody who is highly skilled at FIFA 19, NBA 2K19, Fortnite, and PUBG Mobile – the four games that Gamico currently supports – can earn money from playing them.

Empowerment for gamers

Even though Pak is only in his early 20s, Gamico isn’t his first business venture.

Reality check

Putting gamers first