Andreas Thorstensson facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Andreas Thorstensson
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|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
29 January 1979
Stockholm, Sweden |
| Nationality | Swedish |
| Other names | bds |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur Web developer Video game developer |
| Spouse(s) |
Cajsa Norrefjord
(m. 2010) |
| Esports career | |
| Career information | |
| Game | Counter-Strike 1.6 |
| Handle | bds |
| Team history | |
| 1999–2001 | GeekBoys |
| 2001–2009 | SK Gaming |
Andreas Thorstensson (born January 29, 1979) is a Swedish entrepreneur, web developer, and video game developer. He was also a professional Counter-Strike player, known by his in-game name bds.
From 2001 to 2009, he helped lead SK Gaming, a big organization for professional electronic sports. He created a popular online place for gamers to meet and helped make esports more well-known. Andreas is famous for his gaming tools and articles about Counter-Strike game code. He also created Frag or Die, a very popular Counter-Strike video.
Many people see him as a key person who helped shape esports. He set new ways for how players and gaming communities should be managed. Besides gaming, he started many companies like SPRAYdio, XSReality, ESN, Toborrow, EQT Ventures, and Popdog. Since 2020, Andreas has been making video games. His current big project is Goals, a free-to-play football video game.
Contents
About Andreas Thorstensson
Early Life and First Steps
Andreas Thorstensson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 29, 1979. He became interested in computer programming when he was just ten years old. This happened in 1989 after his dad bought a new computer. By 1992, he was learning to program using a language called C. He also started playing video games around this time.
Andreas began his career in the tech world early. In August 1997, he became a senior programmer at Spray Network, an internet company. He worked there until December 1999. During this time, he also worked for another company called Razorfish in 1999. In 2000, he was the technical chief for SPRAYdio, an internet broadcasting company he started. Then, in 2001, he worked as a Technical Creative Director for Abel & Baker, a digital marketing company.
Gaming Legend: GeekBoys and SK Gaming
Andreas first became widely known in 1999 when he created GeekBoys.org. This website gathered news, especially about gaming. He and his team turned GeekBoys into a gaming clan and news group for the growing world of electronic sports. As GeekBoys became more popular, Andreas, known as "bds," achieved amazing things. He became the top Counter-Strike demo player in the world.
One of his most famous achievements was creating Frag or Die. This video shows amazing game plays and is still very popular today. To make it easier for people to watch game demos, he also helped create a program called GeekPlay. This program let people start watching demos right away.
On September 23, 2001, a German esports group called Schroet Kommando bought his team. This team was based in Scandinavia. The players from GeekBoys joined Schroet Kommando, which was often called "SK." The original GeekBoys website was sold to David Garpenstahl and Mattias Hjelmstedt. Over time, the two gaming communities slowly joined together.
SK Gaming started a new way for esports fans to get special access. They offered a paid membership called "SK Insider." On February 1, 2003, Andreas made a big change. He introduced the first player contracts in esports. This happened when SK Gaming signed the famous team Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP). NiP had just won a big Counter-Strike tournament. They joined SK because of SK's deals with companies like Intel. This allowed the team to travel and compete in major events worldwide.
The team became the very successful SK.Sweden team from 2003 to 2004. They were one of the strongest teams in professional Counter-Strike history. Andreas worked with Alexander T. Müller-Rodic and Ralf Reichert, SK's founder. For eight years, they built SK Gaming into a strong business. Andreas also created popular online tools that helped SK Gaming grow its fan base. One tool was a ranking system for World of Warcraft. It was the most popular system of its kind for a long time.
In 2008, Swedish footballer Fredrik Lundgren became a small co-owner of GeekBoys. He won 1% of the company shares from a football bet with Andreas. On December 9, 2009, Andreas announced he was leaving SK Gaming. He wanted to focus more on his web development work. He kept Geekboys.org as his personal business website.
Building Businesses: From Websites to Investments
After leaving SK Gaming, Andreas continued to run GeekBoys as his web business. He created several important websites. One was Collected.info, a social platform that brought together news from different websites. Andreas worked with David Sundan and Ted Persson on this site. His main project was Njuice.com. This site used smart programs to find popular stories on other social websites. Then, it created its own bigger network of news.
In 2013, Andreas co-founded Toborrow with Sofie Lundström. Toborrow was a service that helped small businesses get loans from regular people. After working on Toborrow for two years, Andreas joined EQT AB, a Swedish investment group, as a tech partner. He stayed on Toborrow's board but passed his development role to Michel Radosavljevic. During his three years at EQT, the group managed a large fund. They also developed Motherbrain, a tool to find promising new companies. Andreas tried to bring esports investment ideas to EQT, but it didn't work out.
In December 2018, Andreas returned to esports. He co-founded Popdog, an esports technology company, as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Popdog started with $9 million in funding. Other co-founders included Alex Garfield, Niles Heron, and Colin DeShong. Popdog quickly bought other companies. These included Loaded, a top gaming talent agency, and Noscope, a big analysis tool for Twitch. They also acquired the esports part of Catalyst Sports & Media.
Creating Games: The "Goals" Project
Andreas started working in video game development in May 2020. He became a business consultant for Bright Star Studios, a Danish company. This company makes a game called Ember Sword. In August 2021, Andreas announced his own game project. It is a free-to-play football video game called Goals. He designed Goals to be perfect for esports competitions.
In April 2023, Goals received $20 million in funding from big investors. This brought the total money raised for the game and its studio to $39 million.
Tournament results
- 9 - 12th — 2001 CPL Winter
