And so I created a substack...
My proposal for the newly forged Weekly Article
At some point over the last 18 months you made a conscious decision to opt-in to hearing from me. All things going smoothly, you won’t regret that by the end of this email.
Before I begin, let’s me be very clear: this isn’t a sale pitch, in fact - there’s nothing for sale! I am merely changing the medium in which I write articles.
In all likelihood, you originally signed up through Medium or iTero.GG with some promise of “Weekly Articles on Esports/Gaming/AI!”. A promise I managed to fulfil for around 12 weeks.
To the more recent joiners (i.e. today); this applies less, so consider it more of a welcome, and opening commitment to you.
The issue with the original format was two-fold:
iTero Gaming (my start-up, explained shortly) began needing an influx of pure development time. This began as a 2-week sprint but has extended through several months and there is no slowdown in the near future.
My original writing was “medium form”. It covered a singular researched topic, usually in quite some detail. In most cases it even needed coding time, so that I could include averages and graphs and the likes.
This led me down a road of perpetual procrastination. I had a pre-set form of writing and I didn’t want to taint it with shoddy craftmanship, and so perfection became the enemy of good.
What I needed was a reset. Some way in which I could re-sign my social contract with you, the reader. In which I propose what it is I will do, then for you to consider and decide. And so I created a substack.
This is how it’ll work:
From now, each week I will send you an email. It will contain some, or all of the following:
Updates & thoughts on whatever it is that has consumed my time that week. Usually, that will be in the realms of gaming, esports, AI or start-ups.
A deep dive into one particular topic. Again, within one of those four categories. This will be similar to my original articles.
Quotes, resources, articles and the like that I’ve found to be of interest.
So, that is my proposal for your consideration. My hope is that you will decide to stay, at least for the first few (if not, there’s an unsubscribe button at the bottom of every email).
With that out of the way, I figured what better start to trialling this concept than giving you a rough idea of who I am and what I’m doing. That way, the updates will feel less like random shots throughout time and more like a continuous moving journey. This isn’t a life story - just the key and relevant moments. It will also be unlike the format of future emails, since this one is dedicated purely to playing catch-up.
We start the journey off 11 years ago in 2012. I’m a Mathematical Finance major in the University of Wales, zero talent for theoretical mathematics but a knack for the practical (i.e. statistics). I’m also playing a shit-tonne of World of Warcraft, and a couple of my friends are trying to tempt me into this new game called “League of Legends”.
2015, I join HSBC on one of their Graduate programs. I find myself in the Pricing team. I build excel spreadsheets 4 days a week, then on the 5th I try and convince people to do what the spreadsheet says is best. I’m also now playing a shit-tonne of League of Legends.
I spend 2 years in pricing and realise my next promotion would be more like 1 day a week on spreadsheets and 4 days a week managing people. I do not like this. I do some research and find the term “Data Scientist”.
I convince the senior brass that it would make sense to put me on a secondment into the Data Science team that was being built. In the meantime, I teach myself how to code. The examples are boring so I build LoL projects instead.
I again, convince the senior brass that it would also make sense for me to go do a Masters and come back an expert. I go do a Masters in Data Science at the University of Manchester. I do not come back.
Whilst studying, I launch a couple of websites. For one of them, you type your LoL name and it suggests new Champions to play based on your playstyle (LoLNet, I think?), the second used data to find common jungle pathing; jung.gg. I post it on Reddit and a handful of people ask me if I need a hand rebuilding the site. Hint taken. We start a Discord.
After my Masters, I end up at Deloitte as a Senior Data Scientist. I love the work but hate being a consultant. I also find the next promotion would involve 5 days of convincing people to buy our services. I really do not like this.
The Deloitte year was 2020/21. Peak covid. I live alone and have time to kill. I start building a betting model to use for esports. I wonder if the technology is applicable to help teams win more games. I message Kieran Holmes-Derby (founder and at the time, CEO of Excel Esports) on LinkedIn. He offers for me to meet him and their current analyst, Logan (StatBird) at their facility in Twickenham Stadium. From this meeting, I get the feeling there’s a huge opportunity to build AI for esports. I call the idea Edge Gaming. Thankfully, I shortly changed it to iTero Gaming. I hand in my notice at Deloitte. It’s now August 2021.
Personal note: as a cruel twist of fate, the same week I leave Deloitte I’m hospitalised with suspected long-covid. I’m essentially bed-bound for 8 weeks with recurring fevers. A poor start to any start-up, and they never even worked out what it was.
To begin, I pitch my idea at the Esports Insider conference, an annual London-based (but at the time virtual) affair with it’s own dragon’s den / shark tank style competition. The judges award me the prize of best pitch and iTero Gaming is now on the map.
Side note: iTero comes from the Latin word itero, which means to iterate/repeat. Iterating is both a fundamental function of Machine Learning, and the best way to improve any product.
I begin building custom tools for esports. Specifically AI, and more specifically trying to build an “AI draft optimiser”. At any point in the draft, run the model and see the recommended picks and why. It works reasonably well. I speak to a number of analysts, coaches, CEOs, middle managers, esports PhDs and anyone else who was interested in offering feedback.
Personal note: I move to Gran Canaria, Spain, for 3 months to try and off-set the amount of time I spent coding in the dark with volleyball in the sun. I wrote an article explaining my thoughts on the digital nomad experience, if you were interested.
It’s April 2022 and no esports contract seems feasible. The amount of effort to build and maintain the model is never worth the amount offered, and each team seems insistent on signing exclusivity. I later find this is a recurring theme in esports based start-ups and is often the killing blow. I’m sure I’ll write about this in more detail soon.
I decide this approach isn’t working and I start looking into a “mass market” equivalent. In other words, provide the same AI tools I was building for esports but make it available to everyone, not just the professionals.
To help me, there is a fairly active Discord from the days of jung.gg. Collin, a US-based gaming community connoisseur and Jamie, a fellow Brit and luckily enough a very well practised accountant, both offer to step-up into an active role in iTero. I becomes we.
Overwolf, the PC mods & apps platform, are set to sponsor the next Esports Insider conference. Whilst researching it, they see iTero Gaming as a previous winner of their pitching competition. They reach out to chat.
Shortly after this initial meeting, we’re on their accelerator program with a product manager, frontend developer and UI designer assigned to the project for three months. We launch the iTero Drafting Coach in the last week of August 2022. Within a few weeks we have over 10,000 downloads. More importantly, the people who try it tend to keep using it. A surprisingly difficult achievement amongst free apps.
November 2022, Overwolf want to accelerate our progress and so provide us with a healthy bit of financing. I hire Nathan, our first full-time developer. We get on with building.
With that, we are now caught up.
The only thing left is to tell you what I’m looking to do next:
Build a more sophisticated AI Coach, the current app only being useful in the “drafting phase”, a small aspect of the game.
Raise money to accelerate the process. Hence you may get the occasional insight into the world of start-ups and fundraising.
Return to the world of esports, more determined and better prepared than before.
We now conclude our opening address.
We’ve covered off the major who’s and what’s, which means that from here on out we can stick to the major updates, findings, thoughts, resources, etc…
Once again, a warm welcome to the substack and I’ll speak to you again next week!
p.s. if you have any topics you want covered, articles/videos that you feel are worth looking at or just want to chat AI/Gaming you can either reply directly to this email or find me on the iTero Gaming Discord (on our way to 1,000 members!): https://discord.gg/DmSUDGEW6V