eFuse, CTO: "We exist to help gamers”

Patrick Shuff, CTO, eFuse. speaks with Brandi Kathman, Super Support & Junior Consultant, Advanced Technology Consulting (ATC), about the vision for the e-sports company and how he transitioned into his current role.

Having grown up around computers, Shuff naturally ended up turning to a career in computer science. He spent a lot of his college years working on Linux and Python, and took his first job as a Linux infrastructure engineer.

He then joined Facebook as a site reliability engineer on the global operations team that owned the general reliability of Facebook.

“You got to a place where you had hundreds of thousands of systems to manage. I learned a lot, I grew a lot, and our team ended up doing what I think every engineer's goal should be — automating.”

Shuff later joined the traffic team responsible for making sure that photos and videos show up on the phone or computer quickly when using Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram.

In 2019, after spending about six and a half years at Facebook, Shuff joined Netflix on the video streaming side. But once he returned to Columbus he realized that a lot had changed. He got in touch with Matthew Benson, eFuse’s Founder and CEO, who was trying to build an e-sports and gaming company.

The combination of his love for gaming, the company’s mission, and his role in the company influenced Shuff to join eFuse.

“Our whole mission is to build tools for gamers to meet, compete, and be discovered. There are over 260 universities in the United States that have varsity esports programs that are building esports teams. Matthew looked at this space a few years ago and realized that, unlike traditional sports, e-sports and gaming space didn't have dedicated sites for gamers to be recruited. “We exist today to help gamers play roles in e-sports gaming, build careers whether playing collegiately or competitively,” Shuff says.

Sharing a glimpse into eFuse’s product roadmap, Shuff says that the company would also start catering to gaming entertainers, who, unlike competitive players, stream games on platforms like YouTube and Twitch.

“We're focused on building that enablement layer for gamers and game entertainers. You have this parallel gaming entertainer streaming on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming, making money. Over the next few months you're going to see us releasing new products to not only facilitate the gaming competitions but also help build tools for the gaming entertainers to more effectively create content, monetize and share it,” he adds.

If he were to offer his younger self advice , he says, “I would tell myself to get more sleep, one of the things that I've undervalued growing up. Being up all night, coding, building things, and then waking up early the next morning to do it again” probably wasn’t the best approach, he concludes.