Greg Selkoe | |
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Alma mater | Rollins College (BA) Harvard Kennedy School (M.P.P.) |
Occupation | CEO of XSET |
Years active | 2000-present |
Greg Selkoe is an American businessman. He is the founder of XSET. He previously founded the streetwear e-commerce company Karmaloop and served as the president and co-head of FaZe Clan.
Selkoe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 6, 1975, and grew up in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood. He was expelled from The Park School and graduated from The Winchendon School, a boarding school in Winchendon, Massachusetts. [1]
Selkoe received a Bachelor of Arts from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida in 1996. After graduating from Rollins, he worked for the City of Boston for three years at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. [2] He then went on to earn a master's degree in Public Policy from Harvard University in 2005. [3] Selkoe is also an alumnus of Y Combinator. [4]
In 2000, at the age of 25, Selkoe founded Karmaloop from his parents' basement in Jamaica Plain while working as an urban planner with the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Karmaloop began as a streetwear e-commerce company and expanded into a brick-and-mortar store that opened in Boston in 2005. [5]
Under Selkoe's leadership, Karmaloop became a lifestyle network and global hub for "Verge Culture," [6] with over 8 million monthly visitors and 940 million engaged social media followers. For his work with Karmaloop, Selkoe received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2012 Award in the e-commerce category in New England. [7]
In June 2015, Greg partnered with Paul Judge and Cedric Rogers to create Curateurs, [8] a website devoted to exclusive men’s fashion items. Curateurs then evolved into Looklive, a startup that sold the apparel seen on TV shows. In 2016, Looklive announced an investment from Y Combinator and the launch of the Looklive app. [9]
In 2020, Selkoe founded the lifestyle brand XSET with Marco Mereu, Clinton Sparks, and Wil Eddins. As CEO of XSET, Selkoe aimed to create a more inclusive and diverse gaming organization that reflected the racial and gender diversity of the gaming world. [10]
Under Selkoe's leadership, XSET expanded into multiple esports titles, including Fortnite, Rocket League, Call of Duty, and Apex Legends. [11]
Some of XSET's notable moves include acquiring Queens Gaming Collective in 2023, [12] signing professional Fortnite player and Twitch streamer with over 7.5+ million subscribers as of May 2024, Cody "Clix" Conrod, [13] popular content creators like Kris London and CashNasty, [14] and securing investments from entities like Quality Control Music [15] and several NFL players. [15]
Selkoe founded the Future Boston Alliance in 2011 to improve cultural life in Boston and retain local creative talent. [16]
Selkoe currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife, Dina Selkoe, and their two children. [17]
Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following its first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who has been its vice president since. After moving the headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio changed its name to Epic Games.
Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 4,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, expanded to San Francisco in 2019, and was entirely online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies started via Y Combinator include Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit, Stripe, and Twitch.
Clinton Charls Sparks is an American DJ and record producer from Boston, Massachusetts. He initially started his career as a rapper, dancer, producer, and DJ who gained notoriety by making bootleg remixes and mixtapes and parlayed that into hosting radio shows on Boston's Hot 97.7, Baltimore's 92Q, Hartford's Hot 93.7, and Sirius XM's Shade 45. He was the long-time host of a worldwide syndicated radio show called SmashTime Radio. He is the current host and owner of the national hip hop radio station Get Familiar Radio on Dash Radio, a digital radio platform for which he served as vice president from 2016 to 2019.
Sports in Massachusetts have a long history with both amateur athletics and professional teams. Most of the major professional teams have won multiple championships in their respective leagues. Massachusetts teams have won 6 Stanley Cups, 18 NBA Championships, 6 Super Bowls, and 10 World Series. The New England Revolution won the MLS Supporter's Shield in 2021. Early basketball and volleyball was created in Massachusetts, which homes the Basketball Hall of Fame (Springfield), and the Volleyball Hall of Fame (Holyoke). Massachusetts also houses the Cape Cod Baseball League. It is also home to prestigious sports events such as the Boston Marathon and the Head of the Charles Regatta. The Falmouth Road Race in running and the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic in bicycle racing are also very popular events with long histories.
Dignitas is an American esports organization based in Newark, New Jersey. It was founded by Michael "ODEE" O'Dell in 2003 as a merger of two Battlefield 1942 clans. Dignitas was acquired by the Philadelphia 76ers in 2016 and is now a part of parent company Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE). The team is best known for its League of Legends, Rocket League, Fortnite, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive squads.
Jessica Livingston is an American investor, writer, and podcaster. She is best known for being a founding partner of the seed stage venture firm Y Combinator.
Samuel Harris Altman is an American entrepreneur and investor best known as the chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019. He is also the chairman of clean energy companies Oklo Inc. and Helion Energy. Altman is considered to be one of the leading figures of the AI boom. He dropped out of Stanford University after two years and founded Loopt, a mobile social networking service, raising more than $30 million in venture capital. In 2011, Altman joined Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, and was its president from 2014 to 2019.
Karmaloop is a streetwear e-commerce company. It was founded in 2000 by Greg Selkoe and purchased by Shiekh Shoes in 2016.
Ninjas in Pyjamas (NIP) is a professional esports organisation based in Sweden that is best known for its Counter-Strike teams. In 2012, the team reformed with a Counter Strike: Global Offensive lineup upon the release of the game. Aside from Counter-Strike, the organisation has teams in Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege, FIFA, Rocket League, Fortnite Battle Royale and League of Legends. They formerly had teams in Overwatch, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Paladins.
Complexity Gaming, formerly stylized as compLexity, is an American esports franchise headquartered in Frisco, Texas. The franchise was founded in 2003 by Jason Lake and was co-owned by real estate investor John Goff, and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
FaZe Clan, or simply FaZe, is a professional esports and entertainment brand. Founded on May 30, 2010, as FaZe Sniping, the organization has professional players and content creators from around the world, across multiple games.
G2 Esports is a European esports organization headquartered in Berlin, Germany, with players competing in League of Legends, Valorant, Counter-Strike 2, Hearthstone, Rocket League, Rainbow Six Siege, Fortnite, and iRacing. The organization was founded in Spain on 24 February 2014 as Gamers2 by former League of Legends pro Carlos "ocelote" Rodríguez Santiago and investor Jens Hilgers. The organization rebranded as G2 Esports on 15 October 2015.
Virtus.pro (VP) is an international esports organization founded in 2003 in Russia and acquired by Armenian investors in 2022. The organization has players competing in such games as Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Rainbow Six Siege, Warface and EFT: Arena.
100 Thieves, LLC is an American lifestyle brand and gaming organization based in Los Angeles, California, founded in 2017 by Matthew "Nadeshot" Haag. The organization competes in several video games, including Apex Legends, Call of Duty, League of Legends and Valorant. They currently operate three franchise teams, in the League of Legends Championship of The Americas (LTA), Valorant Americas League and Call of Duty League ; their LTA team is currently a "provisional guest partner" in the North Conference.
SSENSE is a Canadian multi-brand retailer headquartered in Montreal, Canada specializing in the sale of designer fashion and high end streetwear. It was founded as an e-commerce platform in 2003 by three brothers: Rami, Bassel and Firas Atallah. The company delivers to 114 countries around the world and operates websites in Chinese, French, English, Japanese and Korean.
Lannan Neville Eacott, better known as LazarBeam, is an Australian YouTuber, professional gamer and Internet personality, known primarily for his video game commentary videos, "comedic riffs" and memes.
Keith Hufnagel was an American skateboarding professional, entrepreneur, and fashion designer, the founder of the streetwear brand HUF.
Guild Esports PLC is a United Kingdom-based professional esports company founded in 2019. The company is co-owned by former professional football player David Beckham and launched globally in June 2020. Guild Esports was the first esports firm to be publicly traded in the United Kingdom. The organisation has competitive teams in Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone, Fortnite, Rennsport, Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, as well as a partnership with R8 Esports for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
XSET is an American professional gaming and lifestyle media brand based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 2020 by Greg Selkoe, Marco Mereu, Clinton Sparks, and Wil Eddins.
Loud is a Brazilian esports organization with teams competing in Free Fire, League of Legends and Valorant. Founded in 2019, LOUD is the esports organization with the largest number of followers on social media in Brazil and the second largest in the world. LOUD's Valorant team won 2022 Valorant Champions and Best Esports Team at Esports Awards and The Game Awards.