The average employee at this Las Vegas company makes at least $100K a year

Mobile gaming company Skillz is bringing a taste of the San Francisco tech scene to Las Vegas.

After moving its headquarters from San Francisco to Las Vegas in 2023, Andrew Paradise, CEO of Skillz, has no plans to leave anytime soon — even saying southwest Las Vegas could have a tech corridor on its hands.

How does Skillz work?

Skillz, founded in 2012, is business-to-business-to-consumer company, selling its software to game developers to put competitions inside of their games. Paradise modeled the business after retro arcade game play.

“The early days of the arcade, where people would pay a quarter and you’d put a quarter up on the machine, and then whatever person was best at the arcade machine would stay on,” Paradise said. “So, it’s like a pay-to-play model where if you’re the best, you would stand and play for free. You’re basically playing for quarters.”

Paradise said 80 percent of game play is free, but the remaining 20 percent play for real prizes. Players can win monetary prizes ranging from $1 to “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” or material prizes such as a Ford Mustang convertible or a Gucci skateboard.

Users can download the Skillz app and toggle between games from different game developers.

According to its 2025 second-quarter filings, Skillz had 146,000 paying monthly active users, with a gross profit of $24.2 million.

Move to Las Vegas

The Skillz headquarters is in a 36,000-square-foot office in southwest Las Vegas. It was purchased in March 2023 for $11.5 million, Clark County property records show.

Located in close proximity to other tech giants in the valley, such as DraftKings and IGT, among others, in the area, Paradise sees southwest Las Vegas becoming a booming tech hub.

And Paradise is no stranger to the tech world. He founded Double Picture, an advertising technology company that was sold to MPA Inc., and AisleBuyer, the first mobile self-checkout application, which was sold to Intuit in 2012.

When Skillz first moved to Las Vegas, it had 20 employees. Now, there are over 100. Not only does being in Las Vegas “make sense” for the industry they’re in, it provides a better quality of life for their employees, Paradise said.

Inside, the office mirrors that of tech headquarters in San Francisco. Snacks are offered to employees, with catered lunches, and sometimes breakfast, available every day, coffee machines, glass architecture and atriums, a full gym and video game themed art on the walls.

The average Skillz employee makes $100,000 a year, Paradise said, which can be stretched much further in Las Vegas as compared to downtown San Francisco. Paradise has seen people in the tech industry making over $100,000 in San Francisco but still having to live with multiple people to one room or even sleeping on bunk beds.

“Young professionals, they’re not saving money. They don’t have the promise of a future where they can own a home and have life savings,” said Paradise of young tech workers living in San Francisco. “It’s a very, very broken idea.”

Another issue Paradise had with San Francisco was safety. Paradise recalled a time when he had to tell employees to get away from the windows while active gunfire was happening. Here, he has not had that concern.

“It’s (Las Vegas) a really well-run city, and I’m thankful for that,” Paradise said. “That’s, like, what you want as a business builder; you want an infrastructure where you can thrive.”

In the future, Paradise hopes to become more prominent in the local community and connect with places like UNLV. Previously, Skillz held in-person skills-based competitions for fundraisers for a brain tumor nonprofit on the Strip.

Also, the company has an internship progran, called co-ops, for undergraduate and post-grad students in financial planning and analysis, people operations and software engineering, to help bring more talent to the valley.

“We really want to be more and more prominent in the local community, and really help build tech here,” Paradise said.

Contact Emerson Drewes at edrewes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @EmersonDrewes on X.