We officially launched Juked to the world one year ago, November 6th, 2019.

Our original goal, of course, was to launch much earlier. We had hoped to officially open our doors in time for The International 2019 in August. But hey, getting the product ready in time for Worlds? That would do just fine. We had only been developing Juked full time for six months at that point after all, so perhaps it was a miracle we moved as fast as we did.

However, this moment was not the culmination of just six months of hard work. If you’ve known me [Ben Goldhaber] or have followed my journey in esports, then you know that this concept of “esports unity,” building a single hub for all esports, has been a personal passion of mine for quite literally more than a decade (see: Games Cast TV). And this is a concept that Chris and I, my co-founder and our head of product, had talked about for years before we decided to take the leap of faith.

Bootstrapping a startup takes serious sacrifice and even more serious conviction that your idea is the next big thing. Chris left his position at Hearthsim, a successful Hearthstone analytics company, to join me in building Juked, and I turned down enticing opportunities at esports teams and publishers to take this leap of faith.

By no means was this an easy decision, but both Chris and I knew that this product was necessary for the long term growth of esports, and has the potential to become the place millions upon millions of esports fans congregate daily.

Let me tell you; since we launched, everything you hear about the startup journey has been true.

We’ve made mistakes, we’ve celebrated victories, we’ve felt hopeless, and we’ve felt like we’re on top of the world - probably all in the same week. But every single day we’re motivated by our core mission, to make esports more accessible to everyone and we’re more dedicated and excited than ever to deliver on this vision.

Anyway, enough waxing poetic for me. Let’s talk about some of the milestones and moments that have defined our journey thus far:

• In September 2019, we brought on Delan Tai, our VP of Engineering as our first hire. Delan rules.
• In December, we were accepted into the prestigious tech accelerator 500 Startups to participate in their 26th batch.
• In February, we officially partnered with one of my personal favorite esports organizations, DreamHack, to build their streaming portal for DreamHack Anaheim.
• In April, we officially closed our pre-seed funding round, including $800,000 from amazing angel investors like Mike and Amy Morhaime.
• In June, we brought on Logan Threlkeld (formerly of Envy) to head up our digital content efforts. He’s done awesome work on our social channels.
• In August, we launched esports news on Juked, and have since written dozens of original articles and aggregated thousands (literally) more from other sources.
• In September, we announced our crowd equity campaign via Republic, and have since raised $700,000+ directly from the esports community!

Since we launched in beta we’ve grown from 500 monthly active users to more than 50,000. Over the past year, 3.4 million minutes of esports content have been consumed on Juked, and tens of thousands of articles have been read. We’ve featured tournaments from over 75+ esports games—and when a Juked user sets up their profile, they follow 4.6 games on average. Since we launched our beta, we’ve had match info, streams, and results from a staggering 56,107 matches from 2200 tournaments.

What’s next for Juked?

With the community’s support, we’re doubling down on our mission of lowering the barrier to entry to enjoying esports. This means more tools for following your favorite teams, games, and players. This means social features that allow you to share your fandom and find community. This means gamification, leaderboards, and interactivity that make following esports on Juked more exhilarating. This means more original content from us that helps to break down the most important events and news spanning the industry.

Most importantly, this means continuing to work with you to build what you need to expand your passion for esports. In fact, we’d love to hear from you directly. If you’ve got feedback or want to share your insights as an esports fan, please fill out this survey and we’ll get in touch shortly.

All for now. Here’s to another 12 months of progress and growing esports together!

-- Ben Goldhaber