Why the Unicorn Chose AMEND
He could be laying on a beach drinking mojitos…
I’m in charge of recruiting at AMEND, and I hate recruiting. Well, let me take that back. I hate recruiting tools because if we were to exclusively use them to find our next amazing leaders, we would keep falling into the same dead ends:
- “Sorry, you’ve entered too many qualifications.”
- “Unfortunately no candidates fit your requirements.”
And best of all:
- “Your ideal candidate doesn’t exist. Try easing up on your requirements!”
LinkedIn has a name for this type of person, the ones who simply don’t exist: “unicorn candidate”. That visual above… I have seen it more times than I like to count. Well, fortunately for us, one of those unicorns sought AMEND out.
This is how Paul Bessire, founder of PredictionMachine.com, came to join the AMEND team.
Throughout childhood he loved all things sports, University of Wisconsin, and Big Ten. In fact, he basically based his college decision on sports. All 35 of the schools he applied to were Ivy League or ranked top 25 in basketball or football (none of which were University of Wisconsin or Big Ten).
His final two choices were Duke University and University of Cincinnati (two fantastic schools). When he was making his decision around February 2000, the two basketball teams were ranked #1 and #2 in the country.
He ultimately chose Cincinnati and entered the prestigious Lindner Honors-PLUS business program (LHP). I personally have talked to professors who were intimidated by his bandwidth back then and still rave about his talents almost a decade later. College professors were scared he was smarter than them!!! Exiting college he (obviously) had a full-time offer at a multi-billion dollar corporation, but decided he wanted to follow his passion: sports.
He reached out to a sports simulation website he used every day called WhatIfSports.com about a job. There weren’t any open spots the first time around. But in classic Paul fashion, through persistence and grit, he got the opportunity to work there.
After working at WhatIfSports.com in multiple departments, Paul realized there was an opportunity to bring a fresh perspective on analytics to the gambling and fantasy sports world. He knew about fantasy sports, but not about gambling.
On January 29th, 2010, Paul and his brother founded PredictionMachine.com and got interviewed over 55 times by news stations and websites on launch day. Over the next 6 ½ years the duo built their business without taking any funding, forming partnerships with companies like ESPN and CBS.
PredictionMachine.com became an authority in the sports prediction industry by giving users a level of confidence found nowhere else. Prediction Machine combines data and new perspectives to virtually plays the games 50,000 times before it’s actually played (click here for more info). Paul in his brother literally disrupted an industry. In 2016, they sold PredictionMachine.com.
Paul loved the everyday challenge of finding creative ways to solve problems and wanted to find that opportunity again. Paul reached out to the director of LHP, Jeri Ricketts, and asked who he should network with. She sent him our way. Paul and I met over a Panera coffee and the rest is history. Lucky for us, Paul loved the idea coming up with creative ways to solve business problems, and even more importantly, the people he gets to work with:
“I want to be a part of this team. The people, the talent, the culture, the market and the opportunity for growth in every way make this a very compelling next step for me. I am excited about solving problems that are interesting to me. At AMEND, I get to be a part of an amazing team already working on that every day.” — Paul Bessire
That’s coming from a guy who could choose not to work at all! The moral of the story is that no strategy, tool, or recruiting guru can get you great talent if your culture is jacked up. The unicorn picked AMEND because he has the opportunity to work with the best and brightest minds working together to build great businesses. We’re getting crazy talent that keeps people excited about being here and businesses getting real results.
Paul represents a quantum leap in our analytics capability. We’re getting someone who’s:
- Demonstrated incredible technical competency in the tools and languages he has deployed
- Someone who has built out a business from the ground up
- Brings in expertise around consumer driven industries like sports
- and More!
He’s accelerating everything we have planned to do in the years to come, but we are going to do it in the next 6–12 months.
We are beyond PUMPED to have Paul join the AMEND family!
