Nik Bonaddio
Quick Facts
Biography
Nik Bonaddio is an American Internet entrepreneur best known for founding and serving as the CEO of the popular sports analytics site numberFire. In 2017, he was named Chief Product Officer at FanDuel, who acquired numberFire in September 2015.
Education
Bonaddio was raised in Wexford, Pennsylvania, a suburb in the North Hills neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and graduated from nearby North Allegheny Senior High School in 2000. During his time at North Allegheny, he was featured multiple times in local newspapers for awards received for his online design collective, Lockjaw.
He received a B.S. in 2004 from Carnegie Mellon University in Information Systems, followed by a M.S. in Information Systems Management in 2005. During his time at Carnegie Mellon, he was a two-time All-American athlete and record holder in track and field and a member of the Kappa Delta Rho fraternity.
Career
After graduation, Bonaddio began work at Yahoo! as a software engineer, before moving into the startups with leadership positions at Spongecell and Work Market, both as Creative Director. Bonaddio founded numberFire in 2009, after a successful appearance on ABC's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? with Regis Philbin. During the show's 10th anniversary run, Bonaddio won $100,000, which was then used to found numberFire.
Since its founding, numberFire has grown to over 600,000 subscribers and has gained recognition in the marketplace for accurate predictions, including correctly predicting winners of the Super Bowl and the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship.
numberFire was purchased by FanDuel in September 2015. Terms were not disclosed.
Awards
A prominent member of the emerging NYC tech scene, Bonaddio has been featured in a variety of publications and conferences. In addition to routinely contributing to ESPN, he has been featured in Sports Illustrated in 2011, FastCompany in 2012, and Under30CEO and Entrepreneur magazine amongst others in 2013.