Nik Bonaddio

Last updated
Nik Bonaddio
Born
Nicholas Bonaddio
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Carnegie Mellon University
Occupation internet entrepreneur
Known forFounder of numberFire, Chief Product Officer at FanDuel
Website nikbonaddio.com

Nik Bonaddio is an American Internet entrepreneur best known for founding and serving as the CEO of the popular sports analytics site numberFire. In 2017, he was named Chief Product Officer at FanDuel, who acquired numberFire in September 2015. [1]

Contents

Career

After graduation, Bonaddio began work at Yahoo! as a software engineer.[ citation needed ] Bonaddio founded numberFire in 2009, after a successful appearance on ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire with Regis Philbin. [2] During the show's 10th anniversary run, Bonaddio won $100,000, which was then used to found numberFire.

Since its founding, numberFire has grown to over 600,000 subscribers and has gained recognition in the marketplace for accurate predictions, including correctly predicting winners of the Super Bowl and the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. [3]

numberFire was purchased by FanDuel in September 2015. Terms were not disclosed. [4]

After spending three years as the Chief Product Officer at FanDuel, Bonaddio left in 2020 to start BigBrain, an online gaming company. [5]

Education

Bonaddio was raised in Wexford, Pennsylvania, a suburb in the North Hills neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and graduated from nearby North Allegheny Senior High School. During his time at North Allegheny, he was featured multiple times in local newspapers for awards received for his online design collective, Lockjaw and was active in the soccer and tennis programs.

He received a B.S. in 2004 from Carnegie Mellon University in Information Systems, followed by a M.S. in Information Systems Management in 2005. [6] During his time at Carnegie Mellon, he was a two-time All-American athlete and record holder in track and field [7] and a member of the Kappa Delta Rho fraternity. [8]

Awards

A prominent member of the emerging NYC tech scene, Bonaddio has been featured in a variety of publications and conferences. In addition to routinely contributing to ESPN, he has been featured in Sports Illustrated in 2011, [9] FastCompany in 2012, and Under30CEO and Entrepreneur magazine [10] amongst others in 2013.

Other ventures

In addition to his professional life, Bonaddio is also a highly-ranked and successful high-stakes daily fantasy sports player. In 2022, he finished 3rd in FanDuel's World Fantasy Baseball Championship, and 1st in FanDuel's World Fantasy Football Championship. In March 2023, Bonaddio also finished 1st in FanDuel's World Fantasy Basketball Championship, becoming the first non-professional in the industry's history to win back-to-back live final titles, as well as the first to finish in the top three in three straight finals.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pittsburgh</span> Second-most populous city in Pennsylvania, US

Pittsburgh is a city in and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the second-most populous city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, and the 68th-most populous city in the U.S., with a population of 302,971 as of the 2020 census. The city is located in southwestern Pennsylvania at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River, which combine to form the Ohio River. It anchors the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which had a population of 2.457 million residents and is the largest metro area in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the 26th-largest in the U.S. Pittsburgh is the principal city of the greater Pittsburgh–Weirton–Steubenville combined statistical area which includes parts of Ohio and West Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnegie Mellon University</span> Private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees. In 1967, it became Carnegie Mellon University through its merger with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, founded in 1913 by Andrew Mellon and Richard B. Mellon and formerly a part of the University of Pittsburgh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Jones</span> American businessman and Dallas Cowboys owner

Jerral Wayne Jones Sr. is an American businessman who is the owner, president, and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League (NFL). He bought the team from Bum Bright in 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Presidents' Athletic Conference</span> US NCAA Division III athletic conference of small private colleges

The Presidents' Athletic Conference (PAC) is an intercollegiate athletic conference which competes in the NCAA's Division III. Of its 11 member schools, all private, liberal arts institutions of higher learning, nine are located in Western Pennsylvania. The other two are located in adjacent areas, historically tied to Western Pennsylvania—Appalachian Ohio and the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heinz College</span> Public policy school of Carnegie Mellon University

The Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, also known as Heinz College, is the public policy and information college of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It consists of the School of Information Systems and Management and the School of Public Policy and Management. The college is named after CMU's former instructor and the later U.S. Senator John Heinz from Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kappa Delta Rho</span> American collegiate social fraternity

Kappa Delta Rho (ΚΔΡ), commonly known as KDR, is an American collegiate social fraternity that was established at Middlebury College in 1905. It has chartered 84 chapters, 35 of which are active, in the United States, primarily in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sports in Pittsburgh</span>

Sports in Pittsburgh have been played dating back to the American Civil War. Baseball, hockey, and the first professional American football game had been played in the city by 1892. Pittsburgh was first known as the "City of Champions" when the Pittsburgh Pirates, Pittsburgh Panthers football team, and Pittsburgh Steelers won multiple championships in the 1970s. Today, the city has three major professional sports franchises, the Pirates, Steelers, and Penguins; while the University of Pittsburgh Panthers compete in a Division I Power Five conference, the highest level of collegiate athletics in the United States, in both football and basketball. Local universities Duquesne and Robert Morris also field Division I teams in men's and women's basketball and Division I FCS teams in football. Robert Morris also fields Division I men's and women's ice hockey teams.

Hubdub was a web-based prediction market in which players used virtual money to trade predictions on future events. Over time users built up a portfolio of live predictions across their chosen categories of interest such as politics, sport, entertainment, technology or other categories. Each player's performance was tracked allowing them to compete on leader boards which demonstrate their knowledge and expertise in their chosen category.

The Carnegie Mellon Tartans football team represents Carnegie Mellon University in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III competition.

numberFire is a privately held company that offers statistical analysis of data around sporting events and sports fans, targeting fantasy sports players, digital media, writers, teams, and leagues. The site boasts over 700,000 subscribers and partnerships with ESPN, NFL, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and SB Nation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FanDuel</span> American bookmaker and daily fantasy sports provider

FanDuel Group is an American gambling company that offers sportsbook, daily fantasy sports, horse racing, and online casino. The company operates sportsbooks in a number of states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and West Virginia, as well as an online horse race betting platform, and a daily fantasy sports service.

There are many nicknames for the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark DeSantis (businessman)</span> American tech entrepreneur and consultant

Mark DeSantis is an American tech entrepreneur and CEO of Bloomfield Robotics and an adviser to MIR Ventures in Palo Alto. He was CEO and cofounder of RoadBotics, an AI-based product that monitors and manages roadway infrastructure. Prior to that, he cofounded and was Executive Chairman of kWantix, an energy hedge fund and cofounded and was CEO of kWantera, a GE Ventures backed energy predictive analytics company. Previously, Mark was CEO of Think Through Learning, a venture-backed online tutoring company and US Managing Director of ANGLE Technology, PLC, a UK-based venture capital firm and consultancy. Mark co-founded and serves as a director to several other venture-backed tech firms. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was also a Republican mayoral candidate in the 2007 Pittsburgh election.

CrowdOptic, Inc. is a privately held San Francisco-based medical technology company founded in 2011. CrowdOptic, led by CEO Jon Fisher, developed augmented reality technology and triangulation algorithms used in medicine, sports, and government that gathers and analyzes data from smart devices based on where they are pointed to identify areas of interest. As of 2016, CrowdOptic remains the only patented solution for wearables like Google Glass and Sony SmartEyeGlass.

The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US.

Priya Narasimhan is a Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is also the CEO and founder of YinzCam, a U.S.-based technology company that provides the mobile fan experience for a number of professional sports teams and leagues in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marvin O. Bridges</span> American athlete and coach (1878–1962)

Marvin Orestus Bridges was an American football, basketball, and baseball player and football coach. He served in the Spanish-American War, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DraftKings</span> Daily fantasy sports content provider

DraftKings Inc. is an American gambling company. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, it offers sportsbook and daily fantasy sports (DFS) services.

The 1922 Carnegie Tech Tartans football team was an American football team that represented the Carnegie Institute of Technology during the 1922 college football season. Led by eighth-year head coach Walter Steffen, Carnegie Tech compiled a record of 5–3–1.

References

  1. "Super Bowl: DraftKings, FanDuel launch new games with $1M jackpots".
  2. Empson, Rip (20 September 2011). "NumberFire Raising Seed Round To Build The Last Fantasy Football Tool You'll Ever Need". TechCrunch. Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  3. Boyd Meyers, Courtney (3 February 2011). "NumberFire predicts the Super Bowl winner". TheNextWeb. Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  4. "FanDuel Acquires Sports Analytics Company NumberFire". TechCrunch. 19 August 2015. Retrieved 2020-04-23.
  5. "BigBrain aims to bring live mobile trivia back to glory". TechCrunch. 6 May 2021. Retrieved 2022-11-17.
  6. "numberFire: The Team" . Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  7. "Carnegie Mellon University Men's Track" . Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  8. "Brother wins big on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire"". Kappa Delta Rho Fraternity. 19 August 2009. Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  9. Carroll, Will (4 August 2011). "A Game Of Risk". Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on October 17, 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2013.
  10. Juergen, Michelle (23 May 2013). "An Analytics Platform That Has Mastered Sports Predictions". Entrepreneur Magazine. Retrieved 24 September 2013.