June’s Meet the Team spotlight shines on Charlie Hanley-Nikolls, Chief Procurement Officer. Charlie’s been on the GRID for five years this month! In his role, Charlie leads GRID’s Esports Solutions vertical, focused on data rights procurement, esports integrity and the team responsible for GRID’s Iconic tournament brand, the Champions of Champions Tour. Charlie is a great showman within company gatherings and is incredibly passionate (like all of us) about the people that make up GRID. Read on for some of his favorite anecdotes from his journey so far with GRID.
1. Hi Charlie, you’ve recently hit your FIFTH year on the GRID milestone, congratulations! How would you describe the last half-decade working out of the Berlin HQ?
When we were running our Series A investment process in 2020, GRID’s CEO Moritz and I had multiple calls to pitch the company to potential investors. We’d introduce ourselves and how we got to where we are today and I would begin by describing what brought me to GRID.
Simply put, I found a group of people who I could factually say were the best in the world at what they do. I can sit in a GRID meeting and know, without a doubt, I’m surrounded by people who have no comparison in our industry. So, to have spent 5 years in the company of such people has been amazing.
There’s also the joy of creating an industry from the ground up. A lot of what GRID does, no one had ever done before. So there’s enormous scope and creative freedom, and a tonne of risk taking.
2. You’re employee number 13 and now Chief Procurement Officer, but you started at GRID in a different role — can you tell us a brief history of your work at GRID and how that has led to what you do currently?
I turned up at GRID HQ ostensibly to apply for an operational role — but it was very much about getting my foot in the door to meet the team and talk about what I thought I could bring to the company.
At that time GRID was really just beginning, a handful of people with a great idea and a few initial results. I came from the esports world and had a really well established network with the tournament organisers (TOs), teams, players, etc. and this was something that I thought would offer unique value to what GRID was working on.
So we talked and my first role turned out to be VP of Partnerships — my core role was to strike deals with TOs and game publishers. Over the years we were quite successful and I was able to build out team of fantastically talented young people to expand the work — we’re now almost 20 people in the Esports Solutions team and we handle data procurement, integrity and tournament organisation, you might have heard about our global tournament circuits the Champions of Champions Tour (CCT) in CS2 and we just announced Dota2.
As the team grew and my role in the leadership of GRID grew, it became a quite natural transition to make the step up to CPO and play a more supporting and coaching role with the esports side of the business, and use more of my time on strategic deal making and investment.
3. You have quite an active presence at GRID — leading monthly All Hands as well as acting as MC during the annual company-wide GRIDCons. Besides this type of oraganization — how else does your role involve cross-departmental collaboration?
I love taking a leading role in the community focused elements of GRID. Leading All Hands every month and hosting the GRIDCon events is a great source of pride for me. We have an unbelievably cool group of people and a truly unique culture here so to be able to immerse myself in that and play a role at getting the most out of it is a privilege.
Beyond that my role is heavy cross-departmental. As the leadership figure for our partnerships, integrity and events areas — I am responsible for making sure that our interface with other teams is smooth, that our messages get out and that our team has a great platform to both perform and to be seen in their successes.
4. You’ve been closely involved in many of GRID’s iconic partnerships during your time on the GRID, but are there any special projects that particularly stand out to you over the years?
I’d have to start with the Riot Games partnerships. Firstly, with VALORANT a few years ago and then adding League of Legends this past year. The people we work with at Riot are wonderful and the esports they are custodians of are truly world class. The work that went into building our proposals for both partnerships was monumental and drew on so many areas of GRID.
Two particularly fond memories are receiving the call to hear that we had won the VALORANT partnership during preparations for my wedding day and passing out asleep on the floor during a 14-hour read-every-word-out-loud-to-make-sure-it-sounds-good session of our League of Legends proposal — I was in Malaysia at the time so this call ran from 19:00 to 09:00 the next day.
I made it 13 hours and the rest of the team finished the job!
4. Your team is imperative to getting official esports data to the GRID Data Platform and to our partners, which areas of the ecosystem are the most exciting to you to expand into?
I’m a Dota man so our recent foray into building out our own CCT Dota tournament is really exciting and the culmination of a personal ambition I’ve harboured for a while… We got off to a great start and I’m really excited to see how it performs from here.
Outside of that, I’m really excited by the potential of mobile esports. I had the opportunity to attend Mobile Legends M4 in Jakarta and couldn’t quite believe the level of passion the fans had — thousands of people who couldn’t get a ticket sitting in roads and carparks outside the stadium watching on their phones and the almost hysteria levels of excitement within it.
In addition, I’ve had the chance to work a lot with partners and government entities in the UAE and Saudi Arabia this past 18 months and that has been an exciting new challenge for me. There are some superb people working in our industry out there and they are faced with totally unique challenges that we are really enjoying helping them solve.
GRID is fortunate to have such a broad collection of backgrounds and interests that our international team brings to the company culture — what is your favorite hobbies outside of work? How has life on the GRID impacted your personal life?
Favourite hobbies outside of work…well, I’m a massive foodie and like nothing more than checking out a new restaurant or pub or just walking down to the harbour near my house and buying some freshly landed fish to cook up for the day. Unfortunately my passion for food leads to me not fitting into my suits now and then so I’ve also found a passion for 3 day long fasting…
I’m a huge Warhammer nerd too. I’ve collected, painted and played since I was 9 and recently was super proud to win a major UK tournament for The Old World. One of my prizes was a metre-and-a-half broadsword which was fairly challenging to carry back to the car without having the police called on me…
How has GRID impacted my personal life? Well simply, put GRID is my life and has been for 5 years. The people, the work, the partners and experiences around the world — it has been life changing.
Look out for the next edition of Meet the Team!
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