YouStake allows fans to support, engage, and invest in their favorite sports players while sharing in the winnings and excitement. Our current sports focus is on the skilled games segment, which includes eSports and live poker. Future verticals include golf, tennis, MMA (UFC), motorsports (NASCAR), and drone racing to name a few.

We remember discovering staking while watching the World Series of Poker on ESPN, where thousands of players had put up $10K each to compete for millions of dollars. The commentators were featuring a table and said how one of the players only had 20% of his action. It turns out that a majority of players competing were selling equity stakes in their events. We discovered that staking is a common practice in poker, and that other sports like Golf & Tennis relied on staking as well. But the problem nearly everyone encountered revolved around access, transparency, and security.

Learn More: The Basics of Staking in Poker, Co-Authored by Greg Raymer & Mac Verstandig

Before YouStake, the primary way players were “selling action” was through word of mouth, backroom, handshake deals. Countless deals like this often led to either investors (backers) not paying their commitment, or players not fulfilling their end of the deal to split winnings. The evolution of staking continued through forum based offerings, none of which allowed for user verification, contracts, publicly trackable results or the handling of the money transfers.

After gaining a full understanding of the market landscape, we decided to build the first Minimal Viable Product (MVP) for YouStake, with a focus on testing our business model in one sports segment. If successful, we would expand beyond poker and into every sports that require some type of up front capital (entry fees, training, travel, etc) and has some type of prize pool (prize money, endorsements, etc).

Our goal has been to provide the most transparent, simple and secure staking marketplace for fans all over the world and for players across multiple sports. The backend technology we’ve built is full of game-changing robust features, like single event/multiple event packages, equity percentage options, favorite player tracking, player result history integration, backer/player chat area, payment processing, automatic contracts, and now the latest feature is a tournament event registration portal. In just over two years, YouStake has grown organically to roughly $1M in sales.

First Mover, End-to-end

We are truly the only end-to-end marketplace in sports that allows all forms of crowdfunding (staking is similar to equity crowdfunding, donation crowdfunding, and reward crowdfunding) combined with online event registration, payment processing (from collection of entry fee to payout of winnings) and white label solutions for Sports Teams and Tournament/Event Operators/Organizers.

Jason Robins

Co-founder and CEO of DraftKings

“YouStake creates a viable marketplace and technology solution that supports growth of multiple sports. What sets YouStake apart is their vision to become an infrastructure that all skilled games can benefit from.”

The Sports Sponsorship market is more than $100B annually and growing. Today we are focused on the skilled games segment, this includes poker and eSports - a rapidly expanding market. We feel like we are perfectly positioned to capitalize on this opportunity, as we are at ground level and consider our technology to be the infrastructure that supports the growth of sports. YouStake can become the foundational technology that helps drive deeper fan engagement and player participation, by adding the element of actual investment and player capital raise into the game.

In the skilled games vertical, there are more than 250,000 competitive events every year, and each event has tens to thousands of players. In skilled games, the market size is $16B annually, of which 26% represents Tickets & Entry Fees and 38% represents Sponsorships & Endorsements. This brings our actual TAM to more than $10B in one segment, and expected to grow exponentially.

eSports is a hot topic, and rightfully so, with hundreds of millions of gamers all over the world competing both recreationally and professionally. Reports say that eSports will grow more than 32% YoY for the next few years, reaching more than $1B in annual revenue and upwards of 1.4 billion players and fans. By working directly with players and their fans, and now with Operators, Organizers, and Publishers, we are truly differentiated by providing a complete end-to-end marketplace streamlining all facets of sports funding.

Finding product-market-fit was one of our first priorities when we launched our MVP. We started generating revenue from Day 1, by adding a transaction fee on every purchase (investment or stake from backers). Providing full functionality to staking filled an immediate void, and in our first 12 months we had more than $2.3M in player listings on the marketplace.

Within 6 months of launch, we were accepted into the prestigious 500 Startups Accelerator program in San Francisco, as part of Batch 16 which began in January 2016. There we were able to better understand our one metric that matters, which at the time was user sign ups, then focus on getting users to participate by either creating a listing or backing a player. By Demo Day in May 2016, we had grown from 1900 to more than 4000 users, and listings grew from $1.2M to $3.4M. We finished our second year with over $7.4M in marketplace listings.

We attribute most of our growth through organic and viral marketing. We have worked with every type of player, from the recreational to the up and coming amateur to the professional and the most elite of pros. As we added more users to the marketplace, our press coverage continued to help support growth. We’ve been covered in Forbes twice, our CEO has presented at numerous Tech Conferences, our COO has been featured in multiple Podcasts, and we have a good working relationship with the skilled games media outlets.

A majority of our traction and growth is directly connected to upcoming events and player listings, so we plan to continue to work with all levels of players and various event and tournament organizers. We plan to continue to beat the competition in the short-term by providing optionality on the types of campaigns listed and by listening to our users on how to improve our product. In the long-term, we are working on defensible barriers to entry, like regulatory support and enhancements to the overall security and usability of the technology.

Download: User Testimonials and Social Media Mentions

Press Articles:

• MarketWatch: How to turn $60 into $40,000: Invest in a poker player and get lucky
• innovation enterprise: 5 Sports Tech Startups To Watch Out For In 2017
• SportTechie: Athletigen, SidelineSwap, YouStake Capture VC’s Attention At TPG Sport Group Sports Tank
• HuffPost: Sports Sponsorship is Going Mainstream with Youstake. CEO Frank DeGeorge Talks About E-Sports and Poker
• Forbes: 5 Cutting Edge Tech Companies You Need To Know
• Forbes: Six Startups Primed To Disrupt The Sports Industry Thanks To 500 Accelerator
• Las Vegas Sun: Buying in: What’s in it for poker’s big-money backers?
• vegastech: Meet YouStake: Marketplace for Fans to Invest in Sports Players
• Calvin Ayre: YouStake CEO Frank DeGeorge on Poker, eSports and Crowdfunding
• Calvin Ayre: YouStake Partner With Rivalcade to Offer Staking Platform to eSports Athletes
• Las Vegas Review-Journal: Poker at Jose Canseco’s crib? Count me all-in
• Poker News: 2006 WSOP Champ Jamie Gold Thinks "Maybe I Can Compete Again" and Talks YouStake
• TMZ: SOULJA BOY -- I'LL FUND CANSECO'S POKER CAREER

Wade Radomske

Finance Manager, eSports Arena

“Utilizing the YouStake system made crowdfunding, ticketing, event registration, and winnings distribution a seamless experience, all under a single platform.”

Our business model is simple: we take a 5-10% transaction fee on every purchase from the backer side (demand). Recently we have introduced a player listing fee (supply): they choose between a $1.99 + 5% of the raise or $14.99 + 2.5% of the raise. Additionally, as we begin working with more Operators, Organizers, Publishers, and Developers, we will be adding SaaS revenue through API and White Label products. This will allow other companies can tap into our technology, using the functionality of staking, crowdfunding, event registration, and payment processing, with their own custom look and feel.

Our go-to-market strategy for consumer growth is a focus on player marketing; we understand the value a single user can drive to both the demand and supply side of the marketplace. For example, a well known player can have 10K-100K+ followers on social media - the player provides the supply with a listing to sell equity in an upcoming event, then the player shares with social media and the fans become backers and invest in the campaign.

On B2B growth, we will partner with anyone who is looking to host and run events, but does not want the headache associated with running multiple software products like PayPal for collecting entry fees + GoFundMe for increasing prize pools/directing players to external crowdfunding sites + EventBrite to register players and participants into events. This strategy will also greatly reduce our Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) as the partnerships become a direct funnel for both players and backers.

• Phase 1 (complete) - MVP/Prototype: test our theory of mainstream staking.
• Phase 2 (complete) - Staking OS: over $1M in sales, safe and secure operating system.
• Phase 3 (post-fundraise) - Modernized UX/UI, APIs: easy to user interface with CMS.
• Phase 4 (post-fundraise) - White Label: selling B2B, adding cryptocurrency and other payment options.