In a dark bar at 3 a.m. in Amsterdam, about two years ago, the idea came to Phil Stover and Austin Stofer. Overseas for an esports conference, the jetlagged duo, who'd been working together in Southern California with early-stage startups in various capacities, sat at a high-top with two light brew tall-boys on the table.

As Stover recalls, almost out of the blue, Stofer said, "There's no LinkedIn for gaming."

Phil Stover is co-founder and CEO of PvP.com

A sample profile on PvP.com

"In gaming it (has been) very popular online and in chatrooms to have shit-talking," he said. "Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that...but we want to take it up a level."

Stover says PvP helps gamers find teammates with searches filtered by game, availability and skill level, among other factors. To showcase their skills, users can post highlight reels; some teams may even require a highlight reel for consideration.

"I always like to be really, really brutally honest," Stover said, "and the fact of the matter is what we really have right now is a social media app hyper-targeted at a niche of gaming."

That specific audience will be a key part of the pitch PvP hopes to make to investors this fall. Though the current user base is about 90% American, Stover says the company has global ambitions.

For now, two goals are primary: increase user engagement, which at 15-20 minutes per day on the mobile app compares favorably to Facebook's 40 minutes, Stover says; and grow the user base toward a fall goal of 1 million.

"(If) we find a good financial partner…we'd begin building in the advertising apparatus" to monetize the user base, Stover said. "We'll have a hyper-targeted advertising and brand engine to focus on this audience of gamers that exists anywhere in the world."

Like other gaming companies, the pandemic has hardly been detrimental to PvP. Stover said his team was already mostly remote, and gaming popularity has surged since safer-at-home orders set in.

To take advantage, Stover may prefer an incremental, under the radar approach.

"Part of my theory is to stay away from a big blast launch scenario, (but rather) constantly testing, improving, upgrading and on-boarding as you go. There was a point where I didn't want to have any press," he said.

As that attitude softens and his company grows, new features will continue to roll out. One such expected to launch later this month includes a "squad finder" that will allow users to integrate their Twitch contacts into the PvP platform.

Whatever may come, it will all stem from that one late night in Amsterdam. Proost!