The Rise of David Baazov: From Startup to Online Gaming Giant

David Baazov, the founder of Amaya Inc., became an inspiration to many in the world of online gaming after the firm acquired the company behind PokerStars.

When establishing a new startup, many people do it with the hopes of creating a unicorn, but only a few entrepreneurs achieve that dream. David Baazov, the founder of the online gaming firm Amaya Inc., is one of them.

David Baazov is of Georgian-Jewish descent and spent the first year of his life with his family in Israel before his parents decided to relocate to Canada. The Baazov family did not have a lot of money and was supported by the Jewish-Orthodox community in Montreal, where they settled.

As a young man, David Baazov established a computer-reselling company, which was not very successful in its first few months, but it proved to have potential when he landed a contract with the Montreal Public Library. The firm was going to sell computers to the library, and in just five years, it became worth $20 million.

In 2005, at the age of 25, he sold his computer-reselling company and started working on an electronic poker table with software developers. The electronic poker tables were sold to cruise ships and land-based gambling sites.

This became the beginning of David Baazov’s online gaming firm, Amaya Inc., which he was the CEO of.

How Amaya Inc. became the biggest online gambling company in the world

In 2010, Amaya Inc. went public on the Toronto Venture Exchange with a revenue of $6 million. The company raised almost $5 million with its initial public offering and added General Wesley Clark, a former US presidential candidate, to its board.

After a while of leading Amaya Inc., David Baazov turned his focus to online gaming and began buying smaller gambling software developers such as CryptoLogic and Chartwell Technology.

The acquisitions eventually led to Amaya Inc. buying bigger online gaming companies like Cadillac Jack, and in 2014, the David-Baazov-led firm acquired Rational Group, the owner of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, for $4.9 billion.

This purchase made Amaya Inc. the biggest online gambling company in the world and made people in the industry call David Baazov the “king of online gambling.”

David Baazov and Amaya Inc. were praised and admired for buying a big player like Rational Group.

Andrew Zarnett, who served as Gaming and Lodging Analyst at Deutsche Bank at the time of the acquisition, said that the purchase was remarkable because “a small Canadian company with a market capitalization of around $500 million ended up purchasing a company that was 10 times its size. It is very, very rare for a transaction like that to succeed.”

David Baazov inspires online gaming entreprenurs

David Baazov has said that he sees online gamers more as consumers with a mutual interest in online gaming and gambling than as players.

He is known for his innovative and forward-thinking approach to the online gaming and gambling industry and was one of the first people to recognize the potential of online poker.

David Baazov has become a source of inspiration for many entrepreneurs in the field of online gaming.

The success of Amaya Inc., his view on online gaming, his ability to execute successful mergers and his strategic vision all contributed to that.

His work has inspired others in the online gaming and gambling industry to pursue their own entrepreneurial ventures and strive for success.

After the success of Amaya Inc.

Entrepreneurship has always been a passion of David Baazov’s, and the success of Amaya Inc. made him hungry for more business adventures.

Therefore, he founded the global multi-sector private equity company FIT Ventures, which he was on the board of. The firm invested in entrepreneurs and businesses at all stages of development and provided them with help regarding strategy, business development, financing and M&A.

One of the companies that has raised money through FIT Ventures is the Israeli startup UVeye. The firm develops computer vision and machine learning technology which paves the way for security threats to be discovered by scanning passing vehicles.

Who is David Baazov?

For the past decade, David Baazov has been involved in entrepreneurship, investments and advising firms on cutting-edge technologies and markets.

In 2003, the Toronto-based newspaper The Globe & Mail named him one of the top 10 Canadian entrepreneurs to watch.

Apart from his business ventures, David Baazov has also made multiple donations to charity over the years. His donations include a contribution to Tel Aviv University’s Emergency Fellowship Fund for Ukrainian Graduate Students in 2022.

As Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the lives and studies of millions of Ukrainians were disrupted.

Therefore, Tel Aviv University launched its emergency drive to give Ukrainian graduate students and researchers the opportunity to come to Israel and spend a full semester at Tel Aviv University.

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