When Las Vegas-based Sightline Payments considered where to locate its headquarters, there was a lot of discussion around choosing an office building on which the company could put its name—the distinguishing mark of any business that has “made it,” said co-CEO and co-founder Omer Sattar.
Ultimately, the digital payments provider and mobile app developer forewent such a building in favor of making its global headquarters at the UNLV Harry Reid Research and Technology Park in the southwest Las Vegas Valley, where it can share a building with other innovators in the gaming industry.
“Kudos to the folks within Sightline, because almost unanimously the opinion was, ‘We don’t care about the name of the building,’ ” Sattar said. “ ‘What we care about is where we can be more productive, we can be closer to our partners and we can actually innovate.’ And I think, in hindsight, the team was exactly right. This was the right call for us.”
This month, Sightline and GeoComply—a fraud prevention and cybersecurity solutions company—officially opened their 10,000-square-foot-plus shared office space at the UNLV property.
The two companies have a lot in common, Sattar said, and collaborate in many ways.
One of the first phone calls Sightline makes when it suspects fraud in the gaming industry is to GeoComply, he said, which can detect location fraud—like through the use of a VPN—and works to ensure security and compliance in U.S. sports betting and gaming regulation, media and entertainment more.
“They’re a great company and a great partner of ours,” Sattar said in the new office, made up of bright-colored furniture, modern technology and plenty of sunlight filtering in through tall windows. “And there’s no one else that we’re interested in sharing an office space with other than with GeoComply.”
GeoComply’s new office features an open floor plan, a quaint library of books and two screens showing the location of people actively gaming on devices in New York and New Jersey. The office will serve as the U.S. headquarters of the Vancouver, Canada-based company.
Sam Basile, GeoComply’s vice president of business development and licensing in North America, said the company is excited not only to share an office space with Sightline, but also to be in the same building as UNLV’s Black Fire Innovation—a hub of research and development for the gaming industry.
“It’s been absolutely terrific,” Basile said, noting the building’s proximity to other big names in the industry, including DraftKings, Aristocrat Gaming and more. “We’re right where other gaming companies are located.”
Sattar echoed the sentiment, saying that—as the area continues to grow and more businesses move into the UNLV Harry Reid Research & Technology Park—it might come to resemble existing technological hubs, allowing gaming companies, casino operators and others to interact in a unique way.
“I’m not saying we’re going to be Silicon Valley, but if you play this out 20 or 30 years, this really is the start of something very relevant—not in necessarily just the technology space, but in the entertainment space and in the gaming space,” he said. “That collaboration with UNLV—we spend a lot of time two floors up and they spend time down here, researching, bouncing ideas and bouncing people off of each other—I think that’s gonna pay dividends for everyone.”