csGRO | Acquired in 2018

Startup Project

2016 - 2018

A multi-purpose digital items platform for investing, trading, statistics, and automation based on Valve’s CS: GO items marketplace. Acquired by a Santa Monica-based company (OPSkins’s parent company).

Summary:

csGRO.com was a project I spearheaded from scratch for over a year and a half.

It was bootstrapped and entirely funded by the money I saved from working a minimum wage job.

In 2018, a Santa Monica-based company successfully acquired the project while in Beta.

The site began as an investment portfolio tracker for digital video game items and evolved to include:

1. Automated In-Game Screenshot Generator - This feature allowed users to generate screenshots up to 4K in resolution within seconds (~7 mins -> 16-sec max, without launching anything!)

   • The most successful aspect of csGRO, it remains unique to the platform and was a major reason behind the acquisition and influx of users ~6 months before the acquisition.

2. Trading Platform - Enabled users to trade items with each other.

3. Items Database - Tracked more than 500,000 unique user items.

4. Item Statistics - Provided aggregated market trends based on certain parameters.

5. Investments Portfolio - Allowed users to see how much money they had made or lost, and included alerts and much more.

My Role

In addition to solely funding the project I did the following:

1. Handled frontend development, some backend tasks, automation, and set up other supporting sites
2. Built and set up a GPU server with ghost displays for the screenshot automation platform
   • Saved approximately $1,500 on displays alone.
   • Saved $740 a month on fixed server costs.
3. Designed and prototyped every aspect of the site
4. Hired specialized developers, including two contracted software engineers
   • Necessary for obscure frameworks, such as the Source Engine.
5. Managed a team of nine, comprising two software engineers and seven community volunteers

The Numbers

Note: Most of the user traffic was in the period ~6 months leading to the acquisition. (Due to the screenshot automation platform)

Workflow

Biggest Impact

The largest product launched on the platform was the screenshot generator. Unique to csGRO, we automated the process of taking screenshots reducing an average manual estimated time of ~7 minutes to an automated 8-16 seconds without launching or installing anything.

Example of final product:

Home Page

Give users a snapshot of market conditions and popular items for the day

Item Container Breakdown

Site Palette

Custom CS:GO Class

Icons Usability

Icons were divided into two categories for usability: semi-transparent for functions, and full transparency for badges

Functions

Badges

csGRO introduced a pattern-based badge system to help users easily identify rare patterns without hunting down specific numbers

Investments Portfolio

One of the many challenges we faced involved the varying amounts of insights users wanted for their items. Instead of the ‘Display All’ table described above, we introduced the ability to enable and disable certain columns. This feature gave users the freedom to customize their tables and choose the information they wanted to see, without any limitations.

Currency conversion rates and arithmetic issues were ironed out with the help of the test team of volunteers.

Scamming Countermeasures

Profile

Trading

Modals

Closing

Summarizing a year and a half of work on a project to which I’m deeply emotionally invested is challenging to say the least. I cannot express enough gratitude to the volunteers and developers for their unwavering commitment and hard work, persisting through thick and thin to meet deadlines.

Not a day goes by without missing the community and the unique challenges presented, even those that would often arise at 4 AM.

Update: As of mid-2020, it appears that the parent company has shifted its focus to a different sector and no longer hosts Valve-related projects online; this unfortunately includes csGRO.