Enthusiasm for esports has taken an Accounting and Finance graduate from his bedroom to the international arena for professional video gamers.
Chris Marsh is managing director of Dexerto.com, an international supplier of news and broadcasting of competitive gaming competitions.
The 29-year-old started the company with three long-term friends and colleagues after identifying a gap in the market for BBC Sport-style coverage of esports events.
This is his third foray into the now multi-million pound industry, having run a company while he was a student at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) and worked for an events company.
Chris said: "I've had a passion for esports since I was a teenager, bedroom stuff, and then ran a company on a small scale.
"I had quite a bit of success with Call of Duty and our Guitar Hero player was world champion.
"There were good people involved but we were very much learning on the job. In the end it became difficult to balance my time with building a brand in a highly competitive space."
After graduating, Chris landed a job with an events company.
He said: "I was reasonably well-known in the British esports community, so had leverage with contacts and influence over potential customers."
Chris also helped out on the business side, drawing on knowledge he'd gained at DMU.
"It was a very practical course and gave me skills to build on," he said. "The contract law module, in particular, has proved very useful."
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Chris, from Wakefield, stayed with the events company for several years. When it was sold in 2015 he decided to form his own company, turning the hobbyist website he lent a hand on into a fully-fledge media business.
Chris said: "We were at an event and thought there was a gap in the market for what we do now - providing traditional, BBC Sports-style coverage of esports events, tournaments and news. Since then we've further adapted our content to add in more casual social content, similar to that on BuzzFeed.
"Esports has exploded in the past five years and today it is attracting teams such as Manchester City, West Ham and Paris Saint-Germain.
"From when I first started to now, interest has boomed through mainstream media coverage and the greatly increased supply of high-speed internet.
"Our website offers breaking news, interviews with players and live broadcasts. It is going very well."
Dexerto.com has hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month and a strong following on social media. Ambitions include expanding to offer more esports titles and languages - currently content is available in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
Chris said: "Our aim is to be the first one-stop, 24/7 online news and media hub dedicated to every major esport and esports culture."
To achieve this, the company is seeking £200,000 of investment and has chosen to do so via an equity crowdfunding site - https://www.seedrs.com/dexerto - with more than three-quarters of the total pledged so far.
Posted on Friday 23 December 2016