Delane Parnell (Facebook photo)
Delane Parnell, 25, was raised in Detroit near Seven Mile Road where gangs were pervasive. His father was murdered a few months before he was born, and for the first 12 years of his life, he lived with a family friend with a drug habit while his mother struggled to make ends meet.
"Most of the friends I grew up with," he tells Kevin Ryan of Inc. magazine. "have died or are in jail."
Now, Parnell, who now lives and works in the Los Angeles area, is blowing it up in the tech industry.
Melia Robinson Business Insider writes:
His venture-backed startup, PlayVS, is building an online platform that will let teen gamers form eSports teams at their high schools, compete with players from other schools, and battle for titles at state championships. The idea is to bring eSports into the fold of traditional high school athletics by giving gamers a platform to operate on and a stage for recognition.
PlayVS announced in April it landed an exclusive partnership with the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), an organization that writes the rules of competition for most high school sports in the US and reaches nearly eight million high school athletes, Business Insider reports. The two will work together to introduce eSports across NFHS's 50 member states.
Inc. reports that the startup is on the verge of announcing a record-setting funding round. Peter Pham, an investor in PlayVS and co-founder of startup incubator Science, claims that when it does, it will be the largest Series A raised by an African-American-led consumer internet company.
Parnell's story is nothing short of remarkable.
At age 13, he moved back with his mother, who helped him get a job at a MetroPCS cell phone store in Detroit, Inc. reports. He loved work, and within a few years he saved enough money to buy a cell phone store. Soon he bought another and then another, until he owned three shops in the Detroit area by age 17. He used some of those stores' revenues to help a family friend launch a car rental company, which today has 16 locations throughout Michigan.
"That whole time," Parnell tells Inc., "I had one goal in mind: How can I get as rich as possible to get my whole family out of this situation?"
After graduating high school in 2011, he enrolled in the University of Michigan, but dropped out after one semester. He bounced around jobs in the tech industry. His work with a high-speed internet company led him to learn more about the competitive gaming industry known as eSports, which eventually led him to his current spot in life as CEO of PlayVS.
