Detroit-based Benzinga, a media and data provider bridging the gap between retail and institutional investors, sent its team to Miami, Florida, April 6-9, for Bitcoin 2022.
During that time, the company checked out digital assets innovation and spoke with founders, investors and entrepreneurs.
The following is a conversation with Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneur Jordan Edelson, the CEO and founder of TradeZing, a live-streaming social engagement Web3 platform designed for millennial and Generation Z traders. Check it out!
Benzinga: Care to start off with an introduction?
Jordan Edelson: I’m an entrepreneur and started my first business when I was 14 years old.
I’m a self-taught programmer that created mods in video games and worked with teams remotely. That gave me a very early view of management and team building.
Then, I moved on and created pretty much what Twitch TV is today, about 20 years ago. It was the ability to stream video games to the web. I pioneered the technology and it was under a company — Esports TV and Game Broadcasting Live — that I owned.
I didn’t get a $980 million exit to Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) but I did well with the property. I ran it for about eight years and we were streaming esports video games with Samsung as a partner and all over the world.
Then, I was CTO of the first publicly traded hip hop company, H3 Enterprises.
I worked with Russell Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Franklin Chavis Jr. on hip-hop-themed restaurants. My connection to that was through a deal I formed between Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Paramount Global’s (NASDAQ: PARA)(NASDAQ: PARAA) Viacom.
We built these centers at which you could play video games on the tabletops.
Later, I started a digital agency right at the onset of the Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone. That skyrocketed my career in the mobile app development space and I still own an agency, probably the largest for mobile app development in …