Daniel E. Stenz will work regularly at the start-up space in Schlieren until the end of June. He secured a free workplace there through the PostFinance “startup space” workplace competition. He’s using this as a temporary home base to drive forward the ExaQueue start-up.

ExaQueue is a start-up in the field of gaming. What added value does your business idea offer gamers?

ExaQueue aims to resolve a problem facing lots of gamers: finding suitable gaming teams or partners. Our app helps to find the most suitable people using a sophisticated algorithm – tailored to players’ individual skills, personality and availability. It searches worldwide and around the clock. This social network, which is available to all gamers with a Superior Gaming Online Identity (SuGOI), is the basis for taking gaming as a whole to the next level. We are essentially seeking to open up what was previously restricted to the elite in Esports to a wide range of gamers: competitive games organized in competition categories as regional leagues. We are developing the software that dynamically governs everything, preventing professional gamers from taking part and scooping up the prizes. Once we’ve established the community and a certain reach, we then aim to bring product placement into gaming. But we can’t give too much away about that at the moment. Only our product slogan, which is: “From a solo player to the profession, Gamer.”

What impact has the Esports boom had?

It’s been huge. With the boom in gaming, gamers are showing a growing interest in becoming competitors themselves. That means our target group is also increasing. It’s like with football: kids who like watching professional football often want to play themselves and to test themselves in their own classes of competition. 

You and your team are all gamers. Did the idea come from your own needs?

A very big one. As dedicated gamers we began discussing our idea three or four years ago. We then drew up a plan and made sure our solution offered the necessary potential by carrying out a survey.

At what stage is the start-up ExaQueue?

We’re still in the early stages. We have neither officially founded the company, nor is our team complete. We’re nevertheless in the middle of developing a minimal viable product, we’re working on the crowdfunding campaign, we are in contact with various companies such as NVidia, IOTA and Oracle, and are taking part in various start-up competitions. We’re developing ExaQueue step by step.

What major challenges do you have to overcome during your time in the start-up space?

Firstly, we have to be extremely well organized as all members of our five-strong team are either at school or in jobs and often work on ExaQueue at the same time. Ensuring that we’re all up to speed is challenging. The preparation of our crowdfunding campaign, which we plan to launch in June 2019, is quite a task too. It’s aimed at gamers and technology enthusiasts who wish to support our idea. The big question here is how can we create the viral hype that will raise the funds needed from practically nothing. ExaQueue is also an exciting prospect for gamers seeking to set up their own team, organize tournaments or become gaming influencers as content creators.

As gamers, you and your team are well connected. Do you actually need a physical workplace?

As I mentioned, the organization of the team is one of our greatest challenges. The workspace at the start-up space in Schlieren will allow us to communicate on a regular basis in a professional environment that we’ll also use to make videos. Winning competitions like PostFinance “startup space” workplace is always beneficial as a start-up as it shows we take our project seriously and also that there’s interest in it. This helps establish public trust in our start-up.

What advice would you give other start-ups applying to the PostFinance “startup space” workplace?

It was my first pitch for our start-up. As well as the presentation of the business concept, I focused on showing the jury how a free workplace in the start-up space in Schlieren would benefit us as a team. And that proved successful in our case.

Where do you see ExaQueue in five years?

According to our business plan, all the software will be released in five years and we will be close to generating revenue. By then we also aim to add at least 15 people to our team, to have secured various strategically important partners and to have established a total user base of over five million ExaQueue users.

Why will ExaQueue be successful?

Mainly due to our plan which I’m very proud of because there’s nothing like it on the market. Many functions already exist but cannot be used very efficiently as various information and function mechanisms can only be provided in an economically viable way through synergies with other functions or solutions. But there’s no approach for a platform like the one we want to set up. A key success factor is for every single team player to be able to identify with the problem and give their all for the development of ExaQueue.