Kevin Chou

Kevin Chou is an American video game executive and entrepreneur. Chou is best known as co-founder and CEO of Kabam, a mobile game company that he started in 2006 and grew to over 1,000 employees and a peak of $400 Million in revenue by 2014. Kabam took in over $240 Million in investment. Kabam's most successful game is Marvel:Contest of Champions, a free-to-play mobile fighting game launched in 2014. Kabam was sold in pieces to Netmarble and FoxNext in 2017 for a total somewhere between $700 Million and $1 Billion. Chou's second act is KSV eSports, a start-up that purchased the rights to an Overwatch League franchise in Seoul, South Korea in mid-2017. KSV acquired the team roster for the Lunatic-Hai team shortly afterward, renaming the team to Seoul Dynasty. The Heroes of the Storm teams MVP Black and MVP Miracle were acquired in In November 2017, moving KSV into a new game. KSV eSports then acquired Samsung Galaxy's League of Legends team in November, 2017. Chou and his wife Connie Chen are also known for making a $25 Million donation to the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Career

Chou graduated from UC Berkeley and started out on Wall Street, joining Deutsche Bank to advise public tech companies on M&A and Finance. He eventually moved from Deutsche Bank to Canaan Partners and worked for Maha Ibrahim, a VC partner at Canaan who would later become an investor and Board member of Kabam. In 2006 he started Watercooler with three co-founders and tried to build a social network for sports, TV, and movie fans that eventually became a platform for fantasy sports. When the business failed to get significant traction, Chou pivoted the company from fantasy sports to Facebook games, launching Kingdoms of Camelot in 2009. Camelot was a "4x" strategy game based on a template that goes back to O-game, Travian, Evony, and other early PC strategy games. Camelot was successful and made a lot of money, pointing the way forward for Watercooler as a game company. Chou renamed the company in 2010 to Kabam.

Kabam launched a standalone web version of Camelot and then released a mobile version in 2012. The mobile version quickly became the top grossing iOS app. Kabam became one of the early mobile gaming success stories, releasing several other 4x games and acquiring smaller developers. The company's biggest game by revenue (and arguably its best known release) was 2014's Marvel: Contest of Champions.

Chou grew Kabam to over 1,000 employees and $400 Million by 2014.

In December, 2016 the news broke that Kabam was selling its Vancouver studio, Marvel: Contest of Champions, the Kabam name, and some additional offices and corporate functions to Netmarble for $700 Million. The transaction closed in February 2017. The remaining Los Angeles studio (working on another Marvel game and a project based on James Cameron's Avatar) was sold to FoxNext in a deal that was announced in June, 2017.

Chou didn't take long to reveal his next venture: A new company called KSV eSports. KSV purchased the Seoul franchise for the Overwatch League for a reported $20 Million over the summer of 2017 and then picked up the player roster for the Lunatic-Hai team (renaming the team to Seoul Dynasty). KSV expanded into Heroes of the Storm in October, 2017 by acquiring the teams MVP Black and MVP Miracle (with MVP Black renamed to KSV Black). League of Legends was next in November 2017 as KSV acquired the Samsung Galaxy League of Legends team (with a new name coming in the future). KSV is clearly rolling up teams in most of the major eSports game leagues.

In the wake of the Kabam sale, Chou and wife Connie Chen made a $25 Million donation to the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business. It was the largest donation ever made to the school by an alumni under 40.