Nick Vale's resume

Nick Vale - Tech & Business Entrepreneur

Arizona, USA

nickeev@gmail.com twitter linkedin

summary

founder and tech entrepreneur with 15+ years building across gaming, crypto/web3, and hardware. co-created the #1 and #3 best-selling Xbox Live Indie Games of all time (3.8M+ copies, $12M+ revenue), then co-founded two web3 startups - securing $15M+ from VCs and NBA superstars (Stephen Curry, Paul George), driving $90M+ in onchain trading volume, $5M+ in revenue, and landing brand partnerships with Gatorade, Under Armour, and more. equally comfortable across business operations, software, and hardware engineering. experienced in all facets of company building from game design and protocol architecture to fundraising, team leadership, and go-to-market

experience

rumble kong league (rkl) co-founder, CEO & COO
aug. 2021 – jul. 2025
web3 mobile basketball game
  • we were approached by the Sandbox CMO to help him deliver an NFT collection powered mobile basketball game
  • directed strategy and operations across the full dev stack: game design, art, engineering, production, and finance — leading a 40+ person team
  • the mint went very smoothly and a lot of high profile celebrities and NBA players started interacting with our community
  • this uptick in interest led to attention from prominent investors; we raised $6.5M+ from leading industry VCs and NBA superstars (Stephen Curry, Paul George, Tyrese Haliburton)
  • our collection generated $90M+ (20K+ ETH) in secondary trading volume, and $5M+ in NFT revenue
  • secured, designed and launched mainstream brand integration campaigns with Gatorade, Under Armour, CAA Sports, SLAM, and STANCE
  • managed and launched the ecosystem $FAME token and tokenomics including negotiations for exchanges
  • drove the alpha launch: 60K+ players, 11K+ DAU, 58% D1 retention, 66% W1 retention; #2 new sports game in the US AppStore, Top 10 New Free Sports Game, Top 100 game in 4 countries, 4.9 stars
  • orchestrated merger with Brazil based Hermit Crab Studios to expand and continue global development
  • rumble kong league game available on ios and google play store
media coverage
renft labs (021) co-founder & CEO
sep. 2020 – jan. 2025
nft rentals protocol
  • tested the viability of the NFT rentals idea by participating in 5+ hackathons, taking prize money in all of them
  • with hackathon prize money, we hired our first employees and designed the first defi/yield based protocol for non-fungible assets
  • designed and developed the first decentralized NFT renting/lending protocol on Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche blockchains
  • we raised $6.5M across two funding rounds from investors like Gemini, Mechanism, Animoca Brands, Gumi and others
  • led a 12+ person team scaling wallet infrastructure for NFT utility in gaming/metaverses
  • developed a permissionable non-custodial smart-contract wallet; contracts secured $10M+ in crypto assets
  • we partnered with a leading Brazilian mobile game studio behind Castle Crush (50+ million downloads)
  • this was a tremendous success and led to over 400K+ on-chain rentals for leading web3 games/assets
  • we iterated the protocol yet again, this time based on smart wallet functionality — renters would directly receive NFTs into their wallet but we access controlled what they were allowed to do
  • when it became clear NFT rentals wouldn't find PMF in the near term, we started pivoting
  • built a first competitor to pump.fun, with a team of 2 engineers, in 4 weeks here
media coverage
the sandbox marketing specialist
feb. 2019 – nov. 2021
leading web3 metaverse platform
  • led $2M+ creator fund focused on community growth spanning 1k+ artists
  • forged partnerships with brands/figures (Snoop Dogg, Gucci, Adidas) for visibility and acquisition
  • led inaugural LAND NFT sales, growing the leading web3 metaverse
hitchike app founder
2014 – 2018
peer-to-peer ridesharing app for college students
  • built the first peer-to-peer ridesharing app on mobile, designed for college students — created it as a freshman at the University of Arizona
  • students could post and find long-distance rides using their .edu email, with in-app payments and a 10% take rate on gas money
  • expanded to universities across 5 states: Arizona, Massachusetts, California, Texas, and Wisconsin
media coverage
miner of duty co-founder
2012 – 2013
xbox live indie game
  • #3 best-selling Xbox Live Indie Game of all time
  • sold 800k+ copies
  • led operations, marketing, development and full go-to-market strategy
media coverage
early ventures & game development
2007 – 2014
various roles (co-founder, marketing lead, tester)
  • founded and sold XboxModders.com (150k+ users, early Xbox 360 video game modding forum)
  • led testing for FortressCraft (Minecraft Xbox port, 1M+ sales, top-3 rank)
  • founded Gameeo.com, a leader in Minecraft game server hosting and playable community servers (ReefCraft). we also ran a 500+ player server network of interactive custom plugins and game modes
  • launched HostingCrate.com, a mid sized VPS and dedicated server host. clients acquired by a larger webhost
  • Vale Business Systems — designing/installing POS/CCTV systems and programming architectures