I am William, 3 years ago I quit my Job at Amazon to focus on a peer-to-peer betting app. This weekend we expect to facilitate our 1 millionth bet. Ask me about social betting, sports betting, starts-ups, tech and fundraising.

Submitted by stick321 t3_10y1qfg in IAmA

Hi, I am William Labanowski, Founder and CEO of WagerLab.

I come from a family of 5 boys and naturally we’re all super competitive so we’re constantly throwing out these little side bets with one another. But keeping track of everything has always been difficult. In late 2019, I started to build a fun friendly betting app to help track bets with friends and family. I put it up on the app store expecting just myself, my siblings, and a few friends to download it, but to my surprise I was getting a ton of random people downloading it and requested features and updates.

In mid 2020 I left my job to focus full time on WagerLab.

I am joined by my colleague Stuart. u/StuartWagerLab

Feel free to ask us about the App, the social betting industry, sports betting, start-ups, tech, the Superbowl, fundraising and more.

Proof: https://twitter.com/WagerLabApp/status/1623746290889773058

Download the App :https://link.wagerlab.app/jYXuF9Eocxb

Visit website: https://www.wagerlab.app/

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HipEscapism t1_j7vkrzr wrote

Do you think gambling is harmful?

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upvoatsforall t1_j7vhaqx wrote

I live in Canada where sports betting laws have recently changed. I am constantly bombarded with ads to get me to start gambling. I avoid many things like this because I know how easy it is to become addicted.

How do you deal with the morality of creating a product that will likely end up ruining a percentage of users’ lives?

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stick321 OP t1_j7vjx0b wrote

Hi,

Great question.

The app is unit based and no money is exchanged in the app. So the main functionality of the app is to facilitate fun, friendly bets with your friends on the football, sport and other topics. We certainly not a hardcore bettor platform.

You can propose, track, tally these units in the app. How you settle up is up to you. I don’t believe we will ever move into a real money platform.

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mcdade t1_j7xlmlo wrote

Why are people down voting this answer, can we bet that it’s bots?

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Talks_to_myself t1_j7vg671 wrote

Did you build the app yourself or with a team? If yourself, what is your background to achieve that?

What regulation red tape was the hardest to get pass?

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stick321 OP t1_j7vid1h wrote

Hi,

I built the app myself. But we now have a small team of devs working on it with me overseeing the bigger projects.

My background is in computer science from UT Austin. I worked at Amazon as Software Development Engineer/Manager for around 4 years.

Red tape and regulation in the world of betting is different for each state and can be a nightmare to manage, so I made the decision early on to not allow real money in the App. So there is no real money exchanged in the app, we simply track balances of bets your propose to friends. It is unit based, so therefore legal in all states. How you settle up the balances is up to you.

We still run into issues occasionally, at the moment we have some policy issues we need to fix for the Google play store.

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IAmAModBot t1_j7vikbt wrote

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PeanutSalsa t1_j7vitvv wrote

What are and were your expenses like in building the app and operating it? What are your main expenses in general?

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stick321 OP t1_j7vlwno wrote

Hi,

Fortunately, I am a software engineer, so there was no cost to hire anybody initially. I did everything myself for about a year, including development, marketing, design, support, and coffee making. For the first 18 months I think the cost was minimal. Some hosting and tech costs.

When I needed some help I hire part time consultants from platforms like upwork and fivver.

Now that we are a fully developed and functioning app the cost do go up. The biggest costs is salaries, good software engineers are the main culprits. We do spend a small amount on marketing, but we have invested time and effort into growing the app and brand organically. Search engine optimization for the website and ASO for the app stores. The nature of the app helps us grow too as by default the users are inviting friends to bet with them. This should help us grow at a steady rate with minimal investment in marketing.

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Past-Grab-6653 t1_j888m0e wrote

Hello, I'm 15 and I want to create a tech startup, hopefully at the end of high school or in college. My life's ambition is for this company to succeed. What should I do to increase my chances of success? How did you succeed?

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buddha619 t1_j9dblvz wrote

How do you frame the markets?

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WangleLine t1_ja86ovg wrote

do you fold or crumple your toilet paper?

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