TIIDAL - Key Persons


Carlo Rigillo - CFO

Job Titles:
  • Chief Financial Officer
  • Member of the Management Team
  • Chartered Professional Accountant
Carlo is a Chartered Professional accountant and has over 2 decades of financial experience including four years as Director of Finance and then Interim Financial Officer at Beretta Farms Inc. Carlo was the Chief Financial Officer of 3 Sixty Risk Solutions Ltd, Odd Burger and most recently The Well Told Company Inc. Carlo has a wealth of experience in consumer health, consumer products and the manufacturing sectors and has experience developing risk management frameworks and business processes at the strategic, operational and technical levels within organizations at an international and national level. Carlo holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Toronto.

Charlie Watson

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Management Team
  • Chief Gaming Officer
Esports pioneer & executive with 12 years of gaming industry experience. Charlie brings 18 years of professional business expertise and management in diverse markets and high level recruitment prowess to the company. Founded SetToDestroyX in 2010, Watson has owned and operated Canada's first esports team/brand (now named Lazarus Esports) and has moved rapidly up the global ranks in the last 3 years and is the highest earning esports team in Canada, while also being ranked 8th in North American and 29th in the World. Charlie and the brand have been featured in over 500 articles and national television appearances, including CBC's "On The Money" with Peter Armstrong. Mr. Watson has also been a champion in the collegiate esports scene acting as Lead Consultant for several College and University Esports initiatives, Programs and Arenas in North America and developing Canada's first accredited esports program with Lambton College in 2017. Charlie has also consulted with numerous games developers, publishers, tournament organizers, production companies, esports bars and not-for-profit groups around the world in gaming/esports and currently sits on numerous collegiate PAC committees in Canada.

Chris Herrmann

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Management Team
  • VP Engineering
  • CTO of Sportsflare
Chris Herrmann is the CTO of Sportsflare. Having a strong background in software engineering and having built a wide range of machine learning based data intensive applications, Chris brings engineering maturity to Sportsflare's founding team. In the early days of Sportsflare, Chris worked with Max and Kenny to build and develop one of the most popular esports tipping websites. He put Sportsflare's novel Machine Learning models into production, serving thousands of users. He currently oversees the designing, building, and integration of Sportsflare's products, as well as manage and grow Sportsflare's team. Prior to Sportsflare he held engineering leadership positions in an AI research team at an ASX listed company, Xero. In 2015 Chris received a Bachelor of Science majoring in Physics from the University of Auckland.

David Wang

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Board of Directors
  • Founder and CEO of Bet.Works
David is the founder and CEO of Bet.Works and has over 15 years of experience in the regulated interactive gaming and sports betting industry. David has a strong track record in gaming as he has started various gaming companies, successfully raised capital and formulated various exits. Since 2018, David has lead Bet.Works with a focus on next-generation transformative and sustainable technologies and creating a best in breed sports betting software solution for its clients.

Gavin Roth

Gavin is one of Canada's top sponsorship strategists and partnership architects. He has over 25 years of experience and success in Strategic Partnerships, Sports Marketing, Integrated Media Sales, Sponsorship Sales & Marketing, and Sales Training/Coaching. Currently the Managing Partner at Gavin Roth & Associates Revenue Consultants Inc. - a revenue agency that focuses on sponsorship business development, strategic partnerships and sales training. He also hosts the Roth Revenue Podcast, featuring influencers of sponsorship marketing. Prior to running his own agency, Gavin was Chief Commercial Officer at Golf Canada where he was responsible for Revenue and Marketing for all Golf Canada properties. Formerly Vice President of Multiplatform Sales at Rogers Media and Vice President, Sales at Canada's Olympic Media Consortium (the official media rights holder for the 2010 and 2012 Olympics), where Gavin lead a team that developed and negotiated some of the largest integrated media partnerships in Canadian media history. Gavin has also held senior sales and marketing roles with the Canadian Football League and WWE Canada, and spent 6 years in the ad agency world. Gavin enjoys giving back to the Sponsorship Marketing industry, lending his time to the Sponsorship Marketing Council of Canada and the 5 to Watch Sports Business Awards program.

Kenny Jang

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Management Team
  • Co - Founder of Sportsflare
  • VP Product
Kenny is a co-founder of Sportsflare and has over 6 years of extensive experience in product across the esports and gaming industries. Kenny worked with Max and Chris to build and develop one of the most popular esports tipping websites. Kenny and the team at Sportsflare are behind the vision, development, and growth of the industry's most innovative and most sought after products, including the Betbuilder, Micromarkets, and the Bet-on-Yourself skill-based wagering product. With a background in academia culminating in a PhD in psychology, he brings knowledge into understanding what makes gamers and bettors tick. He leverages this knowledge in conjunction with his commanding grasp of industry trends to drive product innovation to further cement Sportsflare as the go-to provider for all things to do with new esports betting and gaming experiences.

Max Polaczuk - CTO

Job Titles:
  • CTO
  • Member of the Management Team
New Zealand based technologist and entrepreneur with deep expertise in machine learning. Max brings tech, finance, and product management experience to Sportsflare; a company reimagining esports betting with artificial intelligence. Max created one of the largest esports tipping platforms, including the first widely-followed AI model for CS:GO, developing strong relationships with European bookmakers and thousands of esports bettors over 3 years. The idea and team evolved into Sportsflare, pivoting to a B2B business model. Prior to founding and leading Sportsflare, Max led the conceptualisation and development for multiple data products at ASX listed company Xero. Max obtained a First Class Honours degree in Quantitative Finance in 2016, where he researched and developed new AI algorithms for financial analysis. In early 2020, Max published a novel machine learning paper "Temporal Probability Calibration", cited by AI researchers at Zillow. In recent years, Max has provided AI consulting services for companies in legal, healthcare, finance, engineering, and government.

Neil Duffy

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Board of Directors
The Chief Commercial Officer at CSL Esports. Formerly known as the Collegiate StarLeague (CSL) & WorldGaming (WGN), the businesses were acquired by Cineplex Entertainment in 2015 and then again in 2020 by Playfly Sports. Prior to that Neil led the acquisition of CSL to build out the collegiate esports market. Over the past six years, Neil and his team have grown CSL to become the world's largest collegiate esports league and tournament operator with participation by over 1800 campuses, 85,000+ student-gamers playing across 15 different games. Neil has been a leading sales and partnerships maker in esports having worked with brands like EA Sports, 2K, Riot Games, TikTok, ESPN, Zaxby's, Bud Lights, Bethesda and Capcom.

Tom Hearne - CEO

Job Titles:
  • Chief Executive Officer
  • Director
  • Member of the Management Team
Tom is a seasoned operator with extensive experience as a senior executive having scaled publicly traded technology companies including in his roles as past Chief Financial Officer of theScore (acquired by Penn National Gaming for $2B) and Sportech (London Stock Exchange listed). Over the course of his career, Tom has on multiple occasions led companies through their rapid growth stage from startup revenues through $100MM run rates and has been an instrumental part in numerous financings raising in excess of $500MM and M&A transactions.

Zach Goldenberg

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Board of Directors
  • Principal of Liberty Venture Partners
Zach Goldenberg is the Principal of Liberty Venture Partners, a Toronto-based advisory and investment firm focused on startup and growth companies in rapidly emerging industries. A corporate lawyer by background, Zach has significant experience in both the private and public markets as an advisor, investor and board director and has spent much of the past decade working with companies transitioning from private to public navigate the Canadian public venture markets and to source and close strategic transactions. Zach is a graduate of the combined JD / HBA from Western Law and Ivey School of Business and a member of the TSX Venture Exchange's Ontario Advisory Committee.