Swift, the parent company of esports organization Team SoloMid, has raised $37 million in a first round of funding.
The backers include round leader Bessemer Venture Partners, as well as NBA star Stephen Curry, AME Cloud Ventures, Steve Simon, Telstra, Yifang Ventures, Twitch chief strategy officer Colin Carrier, and Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang.
That’s heady stuff for Andy Dinh, the 26-year-old CEO of Team SoloMid. Swift also has other businesses such as an influencer content network and web analytics services FortniteMaster and ProBuilds, according to Forbes.
Dinh is still the majority owner of the company. He started the team when he was 17, using cash he made from selling online guides for League of Legends. In 2013, he shifted from being a pro player to management.
Team SoloMid’s League of Legends teams is one of the 10 inaugural teams in the North American League. That required an estimated $10 million buy-in. No doubt such fees, which are the ante to participating in the big leagues, are one reason that the company raised the money.
