Who Created Cool Math Games?

As an avid gamer and content creator focused on the gaming industry, I‘ve relied on Cool Math Games to provide insightful math gaming content for years. But I didn‘t know much about the founders behind this powerhouse educational gaming site that now sees over 30 million visitors per month. So I decided to investigate who created Cool Math Games and why it has become so massively popular over its 25+ year history.

The Founding Fathers of Cool Math Games

Cool Math Games (originally launched in 1997 as Coolmath-Games.com) was founded by two gamers turned entrepreneurs – Santiago Gonzalez and Tom Walkinshaw. The pair met while getting their MBAs at UCLA in the mid-1990s. They bonded over gaming and the need for more engaging, educational games to make subjects like math less "uncool."

In 1997, Santiago and Tom took roughly $250,000 raised from friends and family to launch their gaming start-up Coolmath LLC and what would become the Cool Math Games site. Their vision? To create a place that made learning math entertaining through games.

Starting Small but Gaining Traction

The first year, Santiago and Tom worked with a couple of part-time developers to build a small inventory of 30 games and promote their new creation. Traffic started slow – just 300 daily visitors on average in the early days.

But their catalogue of math games, aimed to engage rather than lecture kids on math, struck a chord with students and parents. Word-of-mouth, some press coverage, and later – influencer partnerships – amplified awareness for the site.

Within 2 years, Cool Math Games was averaging 5,000 daily visitors. The founders reinvested revenue to grow their game catalogue and hire more developers. By 2005, site traffic had grown over 10x to 30,000 visitors per day.

The Growth Trajectory Takes Off

Like many great start-up success stories, the founders stuck with their vision in those early years without seeing big returns initially. But the emphasis on creating aligned, value-driven games paid off in spades down the road.

Here are some key milestones that propelled rapid growth for Cool Math Games:

Beyond the numbers, I think the creators‘ focus on furthering math comprehension through gameplay deserves huge credit. Teachers have embraced using Cool Math Games as part of lesson plans. And kids returned for the challenge & entertainment of math delivered through interactive games rather than just textbooks or lectures.

Conversion to HTML5

As gaming technology changed, Santiago, Tom and the Coolmath LLC team have continued adapting. With Adobe Flash discontinued in 2020, most of the classic games have now been rebuilt using more modern HTML5 technology to preserve the history.

The converted games still maintain the original fun gameplay mechanics – like the insanely addicting Run 3. But the HTML5 versions ensure accessibility across all modern browsers and devices.

Having played some of these classics both before and after the HTML5 change, I‘ve been impressed with how seamlessly the magic was preserved. The hundreds of development & QA hours spent converting must have been immense!

The HTML5 conversion has been instrumental for introducing Cool Math‘s catalogue spanning 25+ years to new generations of gamers.

Cool Math Games Today: A Runaway Hit

From modest beginnings and just 30 basic games in 1997, the Cool Math Games site has ballooned to host over 1,500 games attracting over 30 million monthly visitors. Parent sites Coolmath.com and Coolmath4Kids extend their educational math games and resources to users of all ages.

The company remains independently owned and operated by founders Santiago and Tom along with a full-time team of math educators, game developers, designers and more out of their NYC headquarters.

While other gaming sites have sold out or saturated users with ads, Cool Math Games remains focused on the original objective – creating fun games that educate. This commitment to value over profits is obvious when playing games on their site even today.

If you ask the creators, they‘ll humbly defer credit for the incredible 25-year run. But as a fellow gamer, I am amazed by Santiago, Tom and their team‘s vision brought to life. They pioneered an entirely new category of gaming – fun educational games – that benefit kids and adults alike to this day.

Math may no longer seem as "uncool" thanks to the wildly popular creation Santiago and Tom brainstormed while getting their MBAs. And for that edu-gaming advancement, I salute the founders of Cool Math Games on an incredible first 25 years…with presumably many more innovations to come.