Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Graham, thanks so much for joining us.
Graham Walters, DraftKings
Thanks for having me Keith, I'm happy to be here.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
I'm excited to talk to you because we're going to talk about a massive success story in the tech industry that's still called DraftKings. And that's combining things that I know I love that sports entertainment, gaming, and technology. So if somebody is watching this that is not familiar with the brand DraftKings. What does the company do?
Graham Walters, DraftKings
So DraftKings is a leader in online sports entertainment. So think. You know, we started off with our bread and butter, daily fantasy sports. And we've expanded into sports betting, I gaming even recently launched our marketplace where we have been selling NFT's and getting in on that craze as well. So I think we're really a leader in this space. And we also have other areas that we support you with, like our media, our media business unit as well.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And, you know, as a publicly-traded company, that's also been another key piece of your growth where, you know, the company continues to record, you know, record quarterly results.
Graham Walters, DraftKings
Absolutely. I mean, I think that our focus, like I was saying, I think that we continue to expect there to be growth in this space for the foreseeable future. That's a really exciting time to join, you know, as states continued to legalize, and there's this trend to legalize and regulate gaming in the US, I think that our trajectory continues to be up. So we're very excited about the opportunities ahead. Short-term, medium-term, and long-term. And we really think we're, this is really just the beginning of what the company can do.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, what makes DraftKings operate, there are so many different pieces to make the company do what it does. So if you thought about the different teams or functional areas, how is the company structured?
Graham Walters, DraftKings
Yeah, so it's really it is centered really around the products right, and a lot of it, it's pretty complicated. Since it's a highly regulated environment, as well. And being a technology company for us, it really centers around the product. So I'd probably start there. First, we really want to focus on the product in our engineering and product organizations. Then we're organized around product operations, analytics, wanting to make sure that we understand how to operate, drive, the product itself, drive user engagement, think about marketing organizations, we invest significantly in that part of the company as well. We have parts of organizations focused on business development, and corporate development, where we look about, you know, what opportunities we have to continue to grow, whether that's, you know, organically or inorganically through whatever deals might come up. Obviously, there are back-end functions like HR, finance, legal, we have a big compliance focus as well, compliance regularly. Responsible gaming is a big focus for us as well. And then we're focused geographically as well. We have you know, a big DraftKings North America group, as well as DraftKings, international as well. So I think I covered most of the teams. But, you know, we continue to look to expand into other products as well, as we think about the operational functions. It's broken out into the different types of things that we offer. So whether that's Daily Fantasy, sports, sports betting, I gaming, marketplace, there's we actually have a new media organization, we'll it's not really new, we're returning to reinvest in media, we recently hired a Chief media officer, and making more investments in that part of the company as well. So a lot of opportunities for us as we as we look to bring on talent as we go forward as well.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
It's a company that continues just to evolve, you know, to the point where you're publicly traded, what's the size of the team? Now I know it's a, you know, it's a number that's continuing to grow, but what's the size of the team in general?
Graham Walters, DraftKings
So in terms of full-time employees, we're just over 3300.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And the types of people that generally join the company, there's a lot that's under the hood, you kind of just gave a glimpse of the different functional teams, but there's a lot that makes all these different gaming opportunities, or daily fantasy sports, or the sportsbook, there's a lot behind the scenes to actually make that happen. So like, what's it like working there? What's the culture like being part of the team?
Graham Walters, DraftKings
Yeah, it's a good question. I think that we still hold true to our entrepreneurial roots, you know, I think that we were founded in, we were founders, Jason, Matt, and Paul in Paul's spare bedroom, way back in the day, almost 10 years ago. And now we're just over the 3300 I'm talking about and I think we still hold true to a lot of those roots, you know, we are, we're all we view ourselves as owners, right? We want to make sure that everyone is an owner of the company, we're all driven and focused on the company's success. And we continue to build in that way. And we're highly data-driven, analytical, and at the same time, we're very people-oriented and want to make sure that there is both the professional focus on the development of results, but also the focus on each other, taking care of our employees and wanting to make sure that all of our employees feel like this is a place for them and are included
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Those different functional areas that you outlined. I'm assuming you're hiring across the board. So if you could just give an idea of in general principles of the hiring going on at DraftKings these days.
Graham Walters, DraftKings
Yeah, we're about to launch into 2022 We just finished off our annual planning process and continue to grow to make sure that we support the company's growth. So really across every single one of those functions, you can find job opportunities that are open. But I think in terms of differential focus, we want to really make sure that we're continuing to build out in our engineering, product, a marketplace that I mentioned, as well and analytics functions. But I would say that there's a place you have interest in joining DraftKings, I would encourage anyone to take a look at our career site because there are going to be opportunities throughout the course of the year for looking for great people.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And obviously, it's a great company to work at if you love sports. But also, if you're not a sports fanatic, that's not something that's required either.
Graham Walters, DraftKings
Absolutely not. You know, I think that it's something that always gets brought up. When we're going through interviewing and talking to people. It's like, wait, wait, I get the product. But do I need to be a sports fan to work there? And I tell everybody, look, being a sports fan is nice. And a lot of things that go along with that. We're not just a sports company, and it's not required to even be a part of it. As I mentioned in our founders before, some of them like Paul aren't even sports fans themselves. I think that you know, it's a place where there's really a spot for everyone not required to be a sports fan. What is required is to be people that are great at what they do, and interested in solving challenging and difficult problems.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Yeah, it's definitely the solving challenging problems at scale, so much data, uptime. I can't imagine the NFL season like the amount of traffic that is going across all the different properties that DraftKings owns, it must be crazy.
Graham Walters, DraftKings
Yeah, absolutely. NFL is always crazy. It's really the time of the year to get the most people on the site and drive a lot of those problems that you're talking about just in terms of scale. But I think we see those same problems actually internally too, where even just in the last two years, we more than tripled in terms of employee size. And I think that requires everybody regardless of function to think about how they grow and operate at scale.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now there are a ton of opportunities out there the tech industry is thriving, growing. So it's a competitive job market. So why is now the ideal time to join DraftKings?
Graham Walters, DraftKings
Now is the perfect time to join DraftKings because there really are opportunities across all of our teams. And there are opportunities for people that really want to get involved, which I still think is the ground floor of the company as we continue to grow. You know, where our growth is not going to slow down anytime soon. And I think there'll be opportunities for people to continue to grow professionally and personally. We want to invest in those people and want to make sure that they have career aspirations that we're putting them in place to succeed and grow over the course of time and they can contribute to DraftKings. You know, as we really set the pace for the US, sports betting gaming industry.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well I know, just from an end-user, I'm a fan of the product. And if you've actually never heard the whole foundational story of DraftKings, you can check out a podcast interview that we held with Paul Lieberman. And he gets into the whole foundational years of the company when they were just starting out doing the daily fantasy sports, to their continued progress to where they are today, which was just an amazing story. It's definitely one that I always recommend, to lots of people because it's just that special type of story. And as Graham mentioned, they're hiring across the board. So you need to go check out their job listings, go to venturefizz.com/draftkings, and you'll see all their listings there. They're hiring for tons and tons of jobs. So make sure you check it out. Graham, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the great things happening at the company.
Graham Walters, DraftKings
Alright, thanks for having me.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
