Join Matt Perrault and special guest Sim Harmon, the CEO of Kutt - The Social Betting Platform, to talk about the history of the platform and the long journey that led him to today!
Matt and Sim also break down the best ways for new users to profit when using the site and also discuss the current state of the sports betting landscape
Timestamps: (May be off due to ads)
Intro - 0:00:00
Kutt Betting Overview - 0:00:30
Sim's Background - 0:01:49
The Origin Of Kutt - 0:07:20
Who Should Be Using Kutt? - 0:09:12
BettingPros App - 0:14:00
How Do We Place Bets on Kutt? - 0:14:45
Who Decides How a Bet Settles? - 0:19:55
Combining Fantasy Football & Sports Betting - 0:24:48
What's The Current State of US Sports Betting? - 0:26:16
Would You Start Kutt in the Current Environment? - 0:32:02
Helpful Links:
BettingPros App - Make winning bets with advice and picks from top sports betting experts. The BettingPros app puts consensus and expert-driven sports betting advice at your fingertips to help you pinpoint the best odds and make winning bets. Download it today on the App Store or Google Play.
BettingPros Discord - Looking to up your game in sports betting? Join our exclusive sports betting Discord community at bettingpros.com/chat! Not only can you connect with expert handicappers who provide free picks for NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, player props, live betting, and more, but now you can also participate in our weekly community picks. Cast your vote, see how your picks stack up against the experts, and track your success!
BettingPros Pick Tracker – Want to track all of your wagers in one place? Check out the BettingPros Pick Tracker. It syncs up with your sportsbooks to tally which picks hit, and which miss AND gives you a live look at what the public is doing so you can use real-time tracking to determine which plays to make, and which to fade: bettingpros.com/pick-tracking
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey guys, how are you Welcome into another episode of
The Sharp's Report with Betting Pros.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm your host, Matt Parol.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Do you guys normally see me on the Daily Juice podcast,
But this is our monthly conversation about everything going on
in the sports betting world.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
People making news, people.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Making noise, new platforms, new opportunities, and new things you
guys can go and use in the sports betting space.
Our guest this month is sim Harmon. He is the
CEO of Cut, the social betting platform that we're going
to get all into. Sim Matt Parolt, thank you for
being here. How are you today?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I'm good, sir. Thank you so much for having me tonight,
and I do appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
This is gonna be fun because you guys are doing
some pretty cool things in the space. If someone walks
up to you and says, okay, you're Cut, you'r the
social betting platform.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
What's that? What is Cut?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
The million dollar question? Right? So putt it's peer to
peer betting where you can bet on anything with a
verifiable outcome directly against someone else. So in many ways
we are very similar to an exchange, but we are
much more social right, and so from day one, what
I tell everyone is that we are social first, and
what you experience on CUT will have a very similar
(01:13):
feel to a social network in the sense that everyone
has a user profile, you can chat with other people,
We have leader boards, we have groups, we have all
these different things that really make it a bit more
engaging and community oriented than your traditional betting platform. Right.
And then again very importantly to point out, which is
we are not specifically just a sports betting platform, hence
(01:33):
why we call ourselves the social betting platform, and we
do allow betting on basically anything and everything, sports, politics,
pop culture, and even personal events.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
We'll talk about how you can get involved in what
it is to use the platform here in just one second.
But what's your background, How did you got how did
you come to this, how did this idea come to be?
And how long did it take you guys to go
from idea to actually implementing the platform.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, well, I think I start every story, every origin story,
by telling people I'm in a dinner gambler. No I'm kidding,
I'm not not actually, but I had a proclivity to bet,
and I have long been a better myself, and I
enjoyed betting on everything, and so the genesis of this
really was me sitting at the lunch table in high
school with my buddies making five dollars bets on NBA games. Right,
(02:21):
you know who would score more points tonight, Kobe or Lebron?
And I tell that story over and over and over,
and it really is true. We would sit there fourteen fifteen,
sixteen years old and just say, hey, I'll bet you
five bucks. Lebron scores more. I bet you ten bucks.
Kobe scores more. We'd come to school the next day
settle up, which usually meant or a roll in iou
where no one ever actually paid. And what I realized
(02:42):
is that's actually a fairly common problem for people, which
is making vets with friends that never actually get paid
or get paid in a way that you know doesn't
involve cash, which is never fun. Right. You know, when
you make a bet on the golf course or something
and someone say, oh, let me let me get your
beer tonight, and you're like, buddy, actually you owe me
fifty dollars. Now, these things are not computing, right. So
(03:05):
that was the genesis of this. And in twenty eighteen,
whenever Pass was repealed. And that's kind of when the
light bulb went off, right, which is to say, hey,
I think that this whole idea of friend of friend
vetting can be a business idea. Admittedly, I had no
clue what it took to start a business. Some days
I still questioned myself if I know what I want
to take to start and run a business. But you
(03:26):
know what that looked like was several years of chasing
my tail, learning about things like, you know, not fun
stuff in corporation, legal regulatory type of stuff, payment processing,
et cetera, et cetera, and then software development, right, and
so it took a couple of years to really get
the idea off the ground, and we finally launched in
November of twenty twenty two. We went live on the
(03:47):
App Store. We have been there ever since. So that's
a brief background of cut, but obviously the details are
a lot more fun.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
How has it been to go from you're still a startup,
but go from like this idea to the end of
the app store now in twenty twenty five, How has
it gone? And what have you guys learned about implementing this?
Because well, you're legal in most states so how have
you taken this to market in what is the market
bear to you?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Guys?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
What have you learned?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, it's been a very meandering journey. And I think
if you talk to a lot of startups, they would
echo that, right, which is you know, I think taking
a step back, I think the media portrays startup life
is this glamorous lifestyle. You know, hey, newer, you raise
money pretty quickly, you know, they highlight all the success stories.
They don't talk about the trials and tribulations and the grind.
(04:40):
And it truly is a grind. And so when I tell,
you know, I talk to a lot of people and
they say, oh, you know, I've just heard about that.
You know, how long have you been live? And it's
always a funny conversation to say, hey, we've actually been
here for a couple of years. We unfortunately missed I
think a lot of the what I'll call I'm not
going to easy money quote unquote back in twenty twenty one,
(05:01):
twenty twenty two. I think several of the people, several
other companies in the space raising money in twenty one
twenty two, we missed that, unfortunately, And so I always
have felt like we're a bit behind on the eight
ball when it comes to just getting our name out there,
doing marketing, you know, and just kind of promoting ourselves.
So what I would say is this, it's it's definitely
a bit a lot slower of a process than I
(05:21):
initially anticipated. You know, I think every person that starts
a company, at least maybe if they don't expect it,
they at least hope that the process is fairly quick.
You know, this is going to be instant adoption. People
like the idea we're going to have a million users
in the first six months, and it didn't happen that way,
all right, And so what I would say is, especially
in this particular industry, there's a lot of behind the
(05:45):
scenes stuff that you have to deal with, right from
the legal perspective, regulatory perspective. I mentioned payment processing a
second right when I started this. You know, hey, let's
just accept credit cards, let's accept debit cards, let's accept
you know, Carrier Pigeon. Right. It doesn'tn't work that way,
and it doesn't work that way. It took us twelve
months to find a credit card processor, right, And I'll
(06:09):
I'll give you quick behind the scenes about what goes
on in my day life. Now we have to do
a chargebacks, right, and so even now full circle moment,
I'm debating whether or not credit cards are even worth
it anymore, because it just it's a it's a constant
headache of people committing fraud, right, and so it's little
things like that that you don't think about when starting
a business. I think everyone thinks of the marketing and
(06:29):
the promotion and you know, the product, but a lot
of the foundational stuff is the stuff that takes a
very long time. And that's something that that there is
a massive on ramp specifically to this industruscificus industry that
takes a while, you know, for most of these startups
to have to overcome banking partners. We've been kicked off
(06:50):
of banks before if I knew banks, and so anyways,
it's it's been a long process. But yeah, I feel
like in the last years when we finally hit our
stride and we're finally doing a bit more, you know,
whether it's sitting the conference circuit, going to events, getting
our name out there, doing some marketing, that's really been
where we've you know, I think we've done a better
(07:11):
jovel last year of all this.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Is there an origin story to the name?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I think I understand cut, like get your cut, But
is there an origin story to the name.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
It's a good question. When I was thinking about naming Cut,
two things I was thinking about is one, can I
find the gambling term a betting term? Right? And then
number two is there a website available or is there
an existing brand? So I went about it probably all
the wrong ways, you know, And then you have to
design the logo and things like that. That's a separate story.
(07:42):
But you know, for me, I finally landed on cut. Okay.
I like the idea of hey, cut out the casino,
cut out the middleman. You know, Hey, let's cut it.
Come to find out, you know, there's hey, I got
to add a K and a tow t's, you know,
in order to make this work, and cut kut t
our name cut dot com was actually available for sale,
(08:02):
so I ended up buying that, and then I committed
to the name. And I got to tell you that
it took me probably a solid year to really get
on board with the name, but now, you know, now
I'm very proud of it, and I like it, and
you know, I also like the fact that it's different,
you know, And I think that a lot of people
in this space, and I guess startups more generally speaking,
a lot of people are kind of in your face
(08:23):
about the name. Ours hopefully give us a bit of
a sense of intrigue and is a little bit intentionally vague,
so that people have to feel back the onneyon a
bit to find out what we do. And I actually
like that as counter and food is that now? I'm
actually like that.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think the answer to this question is going to
be everybody, because everyone who runs a platform like yours,
you want to be available and you want to be
used by everyone. But if I had to like draw
a picture of what the average user that will come
in and find cut to be either a profitable or
be something that they enjoy using, what does that person
(08:59):
look like? Are they a straight beginner, are they somebody
who has some type of knowledge in betting, or is
it a sharp person that's been eliminated at a book
and who was looking to get down, you know a
decent amount of money on a play.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah. No, that's a great question. And I think this
goes back to you know, our differentiator slash, you know,
how we position ourselves. So look, as I said from
the beginning, we are a social betting platform where you
can bet on anything against anyone. With that said, low
hanging fruit finding sports better. Right. You know, sports constitutes
right now, about ninety percent of our markets, betting markets
(09:32):
police and so we do appeal, you know, to the
sports betting demographic. Now what that looks like on cut,
it's kind of a barbelle. It's an end of the
spectrum content. More on one side of the spectrum, you
have what I'll call casual betters, right, people that want
to bet five and ten dollars on something. You know, Hey,
I'm on a first time better, second time better. I
don't do this a lot, but it's a great way
(09:54):
for me as a better to engage with my friends
or engage with other fans. Right on the other end
of the spectrum, you have what you can just called sharps,
you know, line shoppers, arbitrage betters, people who are a
bit more proficient and have been betting for a while,
and they use their site fairly regularly, fairly consistently. Because
(10:17):
we do have better pricing than the traditional books, right,
we may not be as cheap as some of the
other exchanges out there, but we currently charge three percent
as our transaction fee on every single transaction, which is
obviously going to be a lot better than what you
see as the FanDuel and draftings of the world. So
answer your question, you know, kind of it varies a bit,
and I think that we sit at a very interesting
(10:39):
place in the industry because we do actually attract both.
You know, I think exchange is for better or worse,
get the kind of get pigeonholed for saying, hey, they
only attract sharp betters. But you know, I think for
us specifically, the social aspect of it also attracts the
other end of the spectrum, which you know, is something
(10:59):
that I'm really proud about and happy about because it
brings on an entirely new demographic who's not used to betting,
you know, or who may be overwhelmed when they go
to DraftKings or FanDuel.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
On your website cut dot com, kut t dot com,
there's an faq, you know, basically a question and answer
and on there you're pretty open about the fee. You're
pretty open about what you guys charge for the process
of using this platform. How much pushback do you get
from customers when it comes to that, And how difficult
(11:30):
is that to explain to the customer as to hey,
we're a service, We're not taking a big per se.
You're just paying us for the ability to link you
with another person that wants the other side of the
bet or the play.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And yeah, and that's a good question. And I guess
to frame this conversation, frameus question, I would say, firstly,
I consider ourselves an escro agent for all intentsive purposes,
right and so on. Cut, and you can bet directly
against your friends. You know, we'll hold your money and
the payout your instant as soon as the vent is over.
You can bet against strangers, you can bet against whoever. Right,
(12:03):
So again it has that exchange type model, but it
also you can also, you know, send private best to
someone you already know. And so I've always thought of
ourselves as a bit of anst pro agent with regards
to that. With regards to the fee, yes, we are
very open about that. It's plastered several times across the
app as well as on our website. And as I
mentioned in the last question, it's not as cheap as
(12:25):
some of the other exchanges. So to your point, when
we do have sharps come on. When we do have
guys who are line shopping, who are price tensitive betters,
they do come on and they say, hey, you know
I like it, but you know, maybe I could go
pay a bit less over it, you know, xys the exchange.
And what I tell them is that's fine, Like, look,
we're never going to be the cheapest. You know. I
(12:46):
think if some people had their way, we would we
would be free, you know, we would not charge any feeds, right,
And so it's a it's a delicate balance between wanting
to make the user happy but also running a business, right,
you want to make money and scale. You know, what
I would tell you and what I tell other people
who are listening to this is we are not the
cheapest out there. For sure. I would say we are
(13:07):
still relatively cheap, especially when you compare it to the
traditional books. And then you have to ask yourself whether
or not that extra quote unquote fee And again it's
three percent compared to you know, the nine to ten
percent traditional book. You ask yourself if the extra features
on cut are worth it, and my answer would be yes,
the social features we actually have rewards, we get cash
(13:31):
back on every single bet that you make, we give
referral bonuses. We give all these different you know kind
of Hey, take a bet for plus two hundred odds
or more and you get, you know, some coins at
which you can redeem for cash back. We have all
these other features that I do think are worth that
three percent fee. And again, we're never going to be free.
We have to. We have a business to run. And
so in my head I think we we we sitted
a good enough spot because I guess we could always
(13:53):
go lower if we wanted to, or tiered if we
wanted to, versus if we would have started a zero
or close to zero. It's very tough to increase time.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
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(14:22):
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Speaker 2 (14:43):
Okay, let's walk through a bet, all right.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So I have an idea, right, I want to say,
coming up at the Open Championship, I believe that an
American's gonna win.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
The Open Championship.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
And I look at a sportsbook and the odds are
minus one p fifty on an American to win the
Open Championship. I want to go and offer that to
somebody cheaper at minus one twenty.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
How does it work? How do I get that bet
to go on? Cut? I play on cut.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
So I'll start by saying that we are constantly improving
our market offering, and we actually recently hired someone to
start putting up a lot more markets for us. You know,
historically we've been your traditional football, baseball, basketball, you know,
hockey type of type of vetting markets. But now we're
working on what i'll call more esoteric marks. Right, So
(15:32):
first thing is do we already have it up? If not,
it's a very simple process. You go to our home
page and actually a couple couple places across the app,
there's a button that says request to bet. Can't miss it.
You press request a bet. There's a short form, Hey,
this is what I want to see. Here are the
odds that I think are fair. We receive a notification immediately,
and then we can put that put that bet up
(15:53):
on the app. From there, it's as simple as finding
that bet on our games tab. So you go to
the games page games tabuh, you search for that and
then you actually have two options. Number one, you can
create your own bet right or number two, you could
actually see if anyone has already posted the bet you know,
for that market, and you could accept that bet when
you create your own bet. It's very important to point
(16:14):
out that all of our odds are fully customizable. So
to your point a second ago, you know, if you
see I forget what numbers you use? Plus one? Yeah? Yeah,
Let's say you know you got plus one fifty for
a specific you know player and the jams ship. If
you want plus one sixty, it's the simplest clicking a
button that says custom odds and then you can input
your own odds for that and then you click submit
(16:36):
that bet. This post to the community, and then someone
else can take the other side of that bet.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
How unique can I get?
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Can I bet on like my member guest? Can I
create a market for a hole in one for me
and my bolt? Like four of my friends are playing
golf and we're going to go who shoots the lowest round?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Like?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
How crazy can I get?
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah? So, look, when we started putting that, that was
the goal, right. The goal is to say, hey, the people, friends, groups,
group chats, whatever, people are already doing this right, and
there needs to be a more efficient way to do that.
Take fantasy football for instance. You know, I've got you've
got your group chat where your buddies talking back and
forth about fantasy football. Then you have to pay each
(17:19):
other via venmo each week or you know, at the
beginning of the season hopefully, and then you have a
complete separate, you know mechanism usually Yahoo or esp or
whatever to actually track all that. So from its inception,
we aimed to be the platform or the app that
could do all three. Right, you have the bet, you
have the markets, you have the record keeping. Number two,
(17:40):
you have the bet settlement, right, and we actually take
care of every single bet settlement as soon as the
bet is over, within a minute, every bet is settled
and you receive your money. And then number three, we
have the social aspect as well. So from the beginning
we have always aspired to be the one stop shop, right,
and so to your point, that includes personal bet and
(18:02):
so as of right now, look, I'll be very transparent
about this. It is not a large portion of our
app these quote unquote personal vets, but it is getting bigger, right,
And this process looks a little bit like this, maybe
I should say roadmap looks a little bit like this.
So right now, we take a lot of publicly verifiable stuff, right,
pop culture politics, you know, just fun stuff like that. Right,
(18:24):
we already put that up next and well currently and
also what we're working on right now are finding existing
communities that want to monetize their audience via vetting markets.
So as an example, we have a partnership with a
company called Roast battle League. Right, Roast Battle League literally
(18:44):
you know, celebrity roasts like comedy roasts, right, so they're
actually roast Battle League is a league where they have
different roasts in different cities. They will literally have multiple comedians.
Then they'll have a judging panel, then they have an audience,
and so they go through comedians roast each other. The
judges say, oh, I think comedian A one, comedian B one, whatever.
The audience gets to vote on it, and they were like, hey,
(19:07):
we want love for our audience to be able to
bet on this, and so we are partnering with groups
like that, companies like that, brand like that to quickly
put up markets and actually have the audience, the community,
the followers bet on whatever that brand wants to bet on. Right.
And then the next step, which we're also working on
this parallel, would be the bet that you mentioned a
(19:29):
second ago. Right. You know, you and your buddies are
at a golf tournament, like, hey, what anyone you hit
the pen today? You know who has the longest drive?
Things like that, And to answer your question, yes, we
can put those up, but we're working on a more
streamlined and scalable way so that you could create that
bet quickly and instead of us having to actually accept
or confirm that bet. You could actually just have that
(19:50):
confirmed on your end and it only shows up on
your app. What's your buddies app?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
So let me play Devil's I think, give just one second.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Because we all have that one friend that maybe a
bit of a not the most on the up and
up tip of dude.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
We all know him, whoever he may be.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Who gets to determine if it's not publicly very viable,
who gets to determine that that's what actually happened.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And that's the crux of the issue, right, and so
you know that's that's something that we have not perfected,
and I don't think you ever will perfect that, right.
What we've currently are our current solution would be some
sort of consensus mechanism right where you know, you pick
a third party arbiter that to say, I'm going to juge,
I'm going to be the judge. You know, both people
have to agree on that person ahead of time, and
(20:33):
in order for the money to be unlocked and that
settlement actually happened, that third party judge has to actually,
you know, confirm that, hey, these are the results that happened, right,
Actually yeah, but but but I mean, look, You're right,
that's and that's I think that's why this has not
that's why this portion of our platform has not scaled
in the way that we expect it to eventually, because
(20:56):
as of right now, it's it is tough to uh,
you know, to do that at at mass scale, right, right.
But look, I mean I think there is also you know,
even taking it bit by bit, like breaking it down, Like,
I think there's a ton of value in having even
just the social component, you know, you and your buddies
and a group on cut, right, even if you're not
(21:18):
actually betting on you know, even if we're not actually
handling the transaction for bets like that, you know, at
least one component of that entire scenario you just mentioned
can be on Cut. And I think for us can
be baby steps. Right, First, get your group chat on Cut,
then we start creating markets for you. Then you create
your own markets, and it'll go from there.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Let me tell you a quick story because I actually
had to stop doing this because on college football Saturdays,
I host a Discord Channel conversation. We have about sixty
thousand people on the Betting Pros Discord channel when we
started it back and I think we started it in
somewhere like August of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I think we started it.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
We had zero so now you know, four years later
off to sixty thousand users. So we started to do
a saturdaying essentially. I called it the Discord Channel bet,
where people got to nominate different plays and they would
I would bring them up on stage on Discord and
they would say, Okay, I like Penn State minus three today,
or I like the over in the Texas Tech Game.
And so I would list all of the plays, like
(22:17):
there'd be seven or eight plays, and we would vote.
They would actually go in and vote as to which
one would be the pick. Sim they lost thirteen straight weeks,
I would bet it, I would put I would put
my own money down. I would bet it. They lost.
They went one in fourteen over a fifteen week schedule,
and I went, I'm done.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I go, that's it.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
That's actually impressive, but I'm done.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So how would we if we did that on Cut?
How would we do that?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Like, what's the way if we wanted to have a
group bet, how do you do it on Cut?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah? Well, first off, I'll start by saying that sounds
like a good idea, and it sounds like you can
make a lot of money. Right, he gets your audience, right.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I told them That became a running joke.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
That became the literally the best fade of the week
was the discord channel bet. I was like, guys, just
bet against this. It's automatic money, like one hundred percent
the audience. It was a great look at how tough
it is to actually gamble because group think doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Doesn't that work? Doesn't not work? Yeah, that's funny. I'm
a quick side. The game seven, every single person was
on the pacers uncut, and literally you saw that turned out.
So yeah, I mean, look to answer your question, one
of two things. Number one, you know, obviously, let's let's
assume that you've created a group, right I cut, You'll
call it your Saturday morning discord whatever. And then from there,
(23:38):
you know, you can you literally can post picks to
your group, right, say, hey, I'm choosing I'm a South
Carolina fan, unfortunately, a long suffering a South Kouinda fan.
South gone is a seven point under your dog. That's
assume I'm taking South Carolina plus seven. You post that
to the group, and then people in the group can
actually take the other side of that bet right, and
it's not just a one person takes all. Actually you
(24:00):
can you can break that down in ten dollars increments,
so multiple people can actually take ten dollars with that bet.
Ten dollars is the minimum right now. But in a
way we called this pooled betting right group betting, where
it doesn't have to necessarily be a one to one.
It could be one to many or what we're also
working on is you know, multiple to multiple, right, where
(24:22):
basically people can quote unquote crowdfund a bet and then
people get take the other side. They can also crowd
fund the opposite side of that as well. But yeah,
it's a fairly simple process where you could, you know,
create whatever bet or you know, use what cuts markets
it's already up, and then post that bet to the
community and then other people can take the other side
of that only within that community.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
I was thinking about this the other day as to
ways of combining fantasy football and sports gambling and how
do you cross over those conversations and cut came to mind.
Have you guys ever had anybody where in their fantasy
football league take bets on either side as to which
lineup is going to win?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Uh? We that's actually not part of our current roadmap.
I do, actually, but that is very interesting. That's essentially
what happens all the time in Faantas football grips, which
is side bets, right thing, you know, the poker side
bets happen a lot, right, Hey, we're competing against essentially
you know, this table of people, but I want to
(25:25):
bet against you who can have a better hand. And
so that's a very common occurrence, right is these derivatives,
for lack of a better word, these derivative vets, these
prop bets, these side bets, and that's huge. And I
will tell you flatly, I'm honest to a fault. I'll
tell you flatly, we don't have a ton of that
right now. But that is exactly the type of stuff
we want to have going forward. And that's again when
(25:45):
we talk about social that's the exact type of you know,
thing that we have on the roadmap, thing that we
envision for the future, which is you and your buddies,
you and your discord followers, you and your audience. You'll
have your own group, you have your own community, and
you have vets and betting markets that are relevant just
to you. No one else knows about. No one else
cares about, but you and your friends and your followers
(26:06):
and your audience want to make these bets. And this
is a perfect place to have a one stop shop
to make those bets, settle on those bets, and have
a lot of fun in the process.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
It's very very interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Okay, last topic, and it's kind of a thirty thousand
foot view as to where we are from a gambling perspective,
a US gambling perspective, sports betting perspective. You guys are
in a unique silo when you look at the country
and you look at sweep Steak sports books, you look
at social sports books, you look at Calshien prediction markets.
(26:38):
What's your take on the overall ecosystem? Like, is are
we in a good place right now in the country?
Are we all over the place?
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Like?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
What's your look as a gambler, as a sports better
what's your feeling about the industry as a whole.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
This would take thirty minutes and probably four or five
drinks for me to really really tell you how I feel.
I'll try to keep it high level, Okay, what I
will tell you this and I'll start with cut first
and then I'll back up. So we operate in a
very niche tradition, in a very nuanced position, which is
to say, we are a peer to peer vetting platform
(27:11):
that has social features that allows you to bet on
things beside the sports. So we don't currently we're not sweepstakes,
we are not daily fantasy. We're actually a skill based game.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
We have our legal opinion, we have our regulatory he's
crossed and I've dot it. But the industry is changing, right,
and so the goalposts are constantly shifting. I'm very familiar
with some of your other interviews. You know, you have
a lot of bright minds in the industry who you know,
all have opinions on how this is working. And what
I'll tell you is this, in twenty eighteen, when they said, hey,
(27:45):
let's let the states decide, I don't think they envision
what we have now, which is, on one hand, you
have essentially a bit of a capitalist you know, hey,
if one state wants to do it one way and
one state wants to do the other, I mean, maybe
the marketing decide. The problem is they are so vastly
(28:05):
different that it's not working, right, And the and and
and a bigger problem is the fact that a lot
of the people who are writing the writing the rules,
writing the laws are in the back pockets of the
probably hopefully I don't get in trouble here, are in
the back pockets of a lot of the big boys, right.
And so unfortunately, there has not been a lot of
progress downstream when I say downstream, in the startups and
(28:28):
the you know, tangential type of offerings in the innovation right.
And so what we really have seen is essentially a
duopoly at the top and the traditional books. And so
what we're now seeing is a for better for worse.
Are startups and you know, medium sized companies who are saying, well,
(28:49):
we're going to try a different way and see what happens, right,
And so it's a lot of whack a mole that's
going on right now. And on one hand, it's frustrating
because startups like ourselves, we don't have a ton of guidance.
But there's really no way for us to compete against
the big boys. If you're saying, hey, you got to
buy a license for five million dollars or ten million dollars,
(29:10):
that's not going to happen. That's whoever wrote those were
very near sighted. They wanted a quick money grab, and
now they're having to pay the price. Right. And you
see this in Illinois right now. Allnoy just introduced that
the fdditional tax. It's like the people that are running
these laws, they do not understand the ecosystem, and they
don't want to under the ecosystem right. They want to
(29:30):
make as much money as possible and squeeze as much
juice out of their existing limits as they can, instead
of inviting everyone to the table and saying, hey, let's
work out a framework that works for everybody. And I
think because of all that you've seen the prediction markets recently,
who are essentially trying to circumnavigate everything, right, And look,
I think, and I know you have your own opinions
(29:52):
about that. I'll say this, I'm not mad at them whatsoever.
I'm not sure if it's going to work. It may
may not. I'm not mad at them for trying. I
think what we're going to see the next year is
going to be a bit of a clash of the Titans,
where the called the old Guard, the status quo, the
DraftKings and fanduels. They're not going to put up with
(30:13):
new people coming in and saying, hey, we went to
the CFTC, we went above you. Actually we don't need
your permission anymore. And I don't think that's going to
be a pretty a pretty battle. I think there's one
train of thought that says that you can't beat them,
join them. And I think you're already seeing some some
some murmurs of like, hey, maybe FanDuel partners with Calshi,
who knows, maybe Fandel creates their own. But I say
(30:35):
that to say I've been rambling a bit here, But
I say that to say the existing framework does not work.
The state by state, state by state approach is not working. Now.
On the flip side, I don't think anyone wants a
full centralized, you know, governance where someone in Washington decides, hey,
(30:56):
if you want to participate in the sports betting and
shure you need ten million dollars minimum. That's all also
not going to work. The unfortunate reality is that it
need to go somewhere in the middle. But I do
think that at some point they're going to have to
have a tiered system where they say, hey, if you're
this particular model and you're this particular size, you have
one set of rules, and we're going to encourage and
foster innovation downstream and the downstream companies, the startups, they
(31:19):
have a different set of rules, and perhaps you shure
that out and hey, you get bigger, you want access
to more states, then yes you can pay more. But
I think the genie's out of the bottle with innovation.
Consumers are now seeing that they have options, especially in
non traditional sports betting states, and I think it's gonna
(31:39):
be tough to put that back in so sim we
feel like I went around a lot there. Sorry, but no,
it's good. Like I.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Think a lot of people. I think a lot of
people will agree with you about where we are and
what we're doing and where we need to go. Because
my last question will be about the startup world for
people like your company. You guys got involved with this.
Now if you were say starting cut today, could you
(32:11):
start cut today?
Speaker 3 (32:15):
And in some senses it's a lot easier because I
think that betting has been welcomed a bit more then
it will. I mean, look, even as recently the year ago,
betting as the terminology's still very taboo. You know, you
talked a lot of investors. I can't touch that that's
a BCE, you know, you know you talk to payment process. Oh,
(32:37):
I can't touch that. It's it's very mainstream now, So
in some senses it's better. Other ways, Look, it's, in
my opinion's very oversaturated at this point. You know, I
think we we were lucky enough to even though I
feel like we were behind the eight ball for a
long time and in some ways still are, We're lucky
to have started when we started, right you know. Now,
(32:59):
imagine starting a fantasy a daily fantasy app. Now, it'd
be impossible because they're literally literally hundreds of daily fantasy
app out there right now. So yeah, I mean, I
think it goes both ways. Look, if if I'd have
known the heartache and the uh the gray hairs, it
would have given me, you know, and the heartburn, what
I what I start all over? Maybe not, But you know,
(33:20):
I will say that I think this industry is still
in the very early innings, you know, and I do
think that that a lot of innovation is still left
to you know, still going to happen. I think it's
just a question of whether or not the powers that be,
And when I say that, I mean the service providers,
the lobbyists, the regulators, the government, the congressmen, congresswomen, if
(33:41):
they are willing to foster that innovation and foster these
new ideas because ultimately the consumer will benefit from that,
and that's who the focus should be on. Right The
focus should be on you as a consumer, feeling confident
in the you're using, you know, having a wide variety
(34:03):
of products to use, options at police and as of
right now, a lot of the stuff we're seeing from
the powers that be, I think is not conducive to
all of that and is not going to be very
user friendly, which you know, for better for worse, creates
another problem, which is kind of the gray market in
black market areas, So we don't want that.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Sim Harmon is the CEO of Cut. Thank you for
joining us here today on the Sharp Report. We appreciate you.
If folks want to go and get an account, how
can they do? Help and go and do so?
Speaker 3 (34:38):
But dot com Ku t T dot com. You can
also visit us on the app store iOS you can
just search for Cut ku t T. We are not
on the Google play Store, but if you have an
Android or a desktop, you can visit play dot cut
dot com to download there. But yeah, I tell everyone
cut dot com. We have download links for both, so
(35:01):
very cool.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
If you guys liked this conversation, hit the like button
tell us what you think of the comment section.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
We're back every single month.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Next month for another episode of the Sharp Report here
with Betting Pros.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Thanks for listening to the Betting Pros podcast. Follow us
on x and TikTok at Betting Pros and Instagram at
Betting Pros NFL.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Also subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
slash Betting Pros
Hey guys, how are you Welcome into another episode of
The Sharp's Report with Betting Pros.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm your host, Matt Parol.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Do you guys normally see me on the Daily Juice podcast,
But this is our monthly conversation about everything going on
in the sports betting world.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
People making news, people.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Making noise, new platforms, new opportunities, and new things you
guys can go and use in the sports betting space.
Our guest this month is sim Harmon. He is the
CEO of Cut, the social betting platform that we're going
to get all into. Sim Matt Parolt, thank you for
being here. How are you today?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I'm good, sir. Thank you so much for having me tonight,
and I do appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
This is gonna be fun because you guys are doing
some pretty cool things in the space. If someone walks
up to you and says, okay, you're Cut, you'r the
social betting platform.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
What's that? What is Cut?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
The million dollar question? Right? So putt it's peer to
peer betting where you can bet on anything with a
verifiable outcome directly against someone else. So in many ways
we are very similar to an exchange, but we are
much more social right, and so from day one, what
I tell everyone is that we are social first, and
what you experience on CUT will have a very similar
(01:13):
feel to a social network in the sense that everyone
has a user profile, you can chat with other people,
We have leader boards, we have groups, we have all
these different things that really make it a bit more
engaging and community oriented than your traditional betting platform. Right.
And then again very importantly to point out, which is
we are not specifically just a sports betting platform, hence
(01:33):
why we call ourselves the social betting platform, and we
do allow betting on basically anything and everything, sports, politics,
pop culture, and even personal events.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
We'll talk about how you can get involved in what
it is to use the platform here in just one second.
But what's your background, How did you got how did
you come to this, how did this idea come to be?
And how long did it take you guys to go
from idea to actually implementing the platform.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, well, I think I start every story, every origin story,
by telling people I'm in a dinner gambler. No I'm kidding,
I'm not not actually, but I had a proclivity to bet,
and I have long been a better myself, and I
enjoyed betting on everything, and so the genesis of this
really was me sitting at the lunch table in high
school with my buddies making five dollars bets on NBA games. Right,
(02:21):
you know who would score more points tonight, Kobe or Lebron?
And I tell that story over and over and over,
and it really is true. We would sit there fourteen fifteen,
sixteen years old and just say, hey, I'll bet you
five bucks. Lebron scores more. I bet you ten bucks.
Kobe scores more. We'd come to school the next day
settle up, which usually meant or a roll in iou
where no one ever actually paid. And what I realized
(02:42):
is that's actually a fairly common problem for people, which
is making vets with friends that never actually get paid
or get paid in a way that you know doesn't
involve cash, which is never fun. Right. You know, when
you make a bet on the golf course or something
and someone say, oh, let me let me get your
beer tonight, and you're like, buddy, actually you owe me
fifty dollars. Now, these things are not computing, right. So
(03:05):
that was the genesis of this. And in twenty eighteen,
whenever Pass was repealed. And that's kind of when the
light bulb went off, right, which is to say, hey,
I think that this whole idea of friend of friend
vetting can be a business idea. Admittedly, I had no
clue what it took to start a business. Some days
I still questioned myself if I know what I want
to take to start and run a business. But you
(03:26):
know what that looked like was several years of chasing
my tail, learning about things like, you know, not fun
stuff in corporation, legal regulatory type of stuff, payment processing,
et cetera, et cetera, and then software development, right, and
so it took a couple of years to really get
the idea off the ground, and we finally launched in
November of twenty twenty two. We went live on the
(03:47):
App Store. We have been there ever since. So that's
a brief background of cut, but obviously the details are
a lot more fun.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
How has it been to go from you're still a startup,
but go from like this idea to the end of
the app store now in twenty twenty five, How has
it gone? And what have you guys learned about implementing this?
Because well, you're legal in most states so how have
you taken this to market in what is the market
bear to you?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Guys?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
What have you learned?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, it's been a very meandering journey. And I think
if you talk to a lot of startups, they would
echo that, right, which is you know, I think taking
a step back, I think the media portrays startup life
is this glamorous lifestyle. You know, hey, newer, you raise
money pretty quickly, you know, they highlight all the success stories.
They don't talk about the trials and tribulations and the grind.
(04:40):
And it truly is a grind. And so when I tell,
you know, I talk to a lot of people and
they say, oh, you know, I've just heard about that.
You know, how long have you been live? And it's
always a funny conversation to say, hey, we've actually been
here for a couple of years. We unfortunately missed I
think a lot of the what I'll call I'm not
going to easy money quote unquote back in twenty twenty one,
(05:01):
twenty twenty two. I think several of the people, several
other companies in the space raising money in twenty one
twenty two, we missed that, unfortunately, And so I always
have felt like we're a bit behind on the eight
ball when it comes to just getting our name out there,
doing marketing, you know, and just kind of promoting ourselves.
So what I would say is this, it's it's definitely
a bit a lot slower of a process than I
(05:21):
initially anticipated. You know, I think every person that starts
a company, at least maybe if they don't expect it,
they at least hope that the process is fairly quick.
You know, this is going to be instant adoption. People
like the idea we're going to have a million users
in the first six months, and it didn't happen that way,
all right, And so what I would say is, especially
in this particular industry, there's a lot of behind the
(05:45):
scenes stuff that you have to deal with, right from
the legal perspective, regulatory perspective. I mentioned payment processing a
second right when I started this. You know, hey, let's
just accept credit cards, let's accept debit cards, let's accept
you know, Carrier Pigeon. Right. It doesn'tn't work that way,
and it doesn't work that way. It took us twelve
months to find a credit card processor, right, And I'll
(06:09):
I'll give you quick behind the scenes about what goes
on in my day life. Now we have to do
a chargebacks, right, and so even now full circle moment,
I'm debating whether or not credit cards are even worth
it anymore, because it just it's a it's a constant
headache of people committing fraud, right, and so it's little
things like that that you don't think about when starting
a business. I think everyone thinks of the marketing and
(06:29):
the promotion and you know, the product, but a lot
of the foundational stuff is the stuff that takes a
very long time. And that's something that that there is
a massive on ramp specifically to this industruscificus industry that
takes a while, you know, for most of these startups
to have to overcome banking partners. We've been kicked off
(06:50):
of banks before if I knew banks, and so anyways,
it's it's been a long process. But yeah, I feel
like in the last years when we finally hit our
stride and we're finally doing a bit more, you know,
whether it's sitting the conference circuit, going to events, getting
our name out there, doing some marketing, that's really been
where we've you know, I think we've done a better
(07:11):
jovel last year of all this.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Is there an origin story to the name?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I think I understand cut, like get your cut, But
is there an origin story to the name.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
It's a good question. When I was thinking about naming Cut,
two things I was thinking about is one, can I
find the gambling term a betting term? Right? And then
number two is there a website available or is there
an existing brand? So I went about it probably all
the wrong ways, you know, And then you have to
design the logo and things like that. That's a separate story.
(07:42):
But you know, for me, I finally landed on cut. Okay.
I like the idea of hey, cut out the casino,
cut out the middleman. You know, Hey, let's cut it.
Come to find out, you know, there's hey, I got
to add a K and a tow t's, you know,
in order to make this work, and cut kut t
our name cut dot com was actually available for sale,
(08:02):
so I ended up buying that, and then I committed
to the name. And I got to tell you that
it took me probably a solid year to really get
on board with the name, but now, you know, now
I'm very proud of it, and I like it, and
you know, I also like the fact that it's different,
you know, And I think that a lot of people
in this space, and I guess startups more generally speaking,
a lot of people are kind of in your face
(08:23):
about the name. Ours hopefully give us a bit of
a sense of intrigue and is a little bit intentionally vague,
so that people have to feel back the onneyon a
bit to find out what we do. And I actually
like that as counter and food is that now? I'm
actually like that.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think the answer to this question is going to
be everybody, because everyone who runs a platform like yours,
you want to be available and you want to be
used by everyone. But if I had to like draw
a picture of what the average user that will come
in and find cut to be either a profitable or
be something that they enjoy using, what does that person
(08:59):
look like? Are they a straight beginner, are they somebody
who has some type of knowledge in betting, or is
it a sharp person that's been eliminated at a book
and who was looking to get down, you know a
decent amount of money on a play.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah. No, that's a great question. And I think this
goes back to you know, our differentiator slash, you know,
how we position ourselves. So look, as I said from
the beginning, we are a social betting platform where you
can bet on anything against anyone. With that said, low
hanging fruit finding sports better. Right. You know, sports constitutes
right now, about ninety percent of our markets, betting markets
(09:32):
police and so we do appeal, you know, to the
sports betting demographic. Now what that looks like on cut,
it's kind of a barbelle. It's an end of the
spectrum content. More on one side of the spectrum, you
have what I'll call casual betters, right, people that want
to bet five and ten dollars on something. You know, Hey,
I'm on a first time better, second time better. I
don't do this a lot, but it's a great way
(09:54):
for me as a better to engage with my friends
or engage with other fans. Right on the other end
of the spectrum, you have what you can just called sharps,
you know, line shoppers, arbitrage betters, people who are a
bit more proficient and have been betting for a while,
and they use their site fairly regularly, fairly consistently. Because
(10:17):
we do have better pricing than the traditional books, right,
we may not be as cheap as some of the
other exchanges out there, but we currently charge three percent
as our transaction fee on every single transaction, which is
obviously going to be a lot better than what you
see as the FanDuel and draftings of the world. So
answer your question, you know, kind of it varies a bit,
and I think that we sit at a very interesting
(10:39):
place in the industry because we do actually attract both.
You know, I think exchange is for better or worse,
get the kind of get pigeonholed for saying, hey, they
only attract sharp betters. But you know, I think for
us specifically, the social aspect of it also attracts the
other end of the spectrum, which you know, is something
(10:59):
that I'm really proud about and happy about because it
brings on an entirely new demographic who's not used to betting,
you know, or who may be overwhelmed when they go
to DraftKings or FanDuel.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
On your website cut dot com, kut t dot com,
there's an faq, you know, basically a question and answer
and on there you're pretty open about the fee. You're
pretty open about what you guys charge for the process
of using this platform. How much pushback do you get
from customers when it comes to that, And how difficult
(11:30):
is that to explain to the customer as to hey,
we're a service, We're not taking a big per se.
You're just paying us for the ability to link you
with another person that wants the other side of the
bet or the play.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And yeah, and that's a good question. And I guess
to frame this conversation, frameus question, I would say, firstly,
I consider ourselves an escro agent for all intentsive purposes,
right and so on. Cut, and you can bet directly
against your friends. You know, we'll hold your money and
the payout your instant as soon as the vent is over.
You can bet against strangers, you can bet against whoever. Right,
(12:03):
So again it has that exchange type model, but it
also you can also, you know, send private best to
someone you already know. And so I've always thought of
ourselves as a bit of anst pro agent with regards
to that. With regards to the fee, yes, we are
very open about that. It's plastered several times across the
app as well as on our website. And as I
mentioned in the last question, it's not as cheap as
(12:25):
some of the other exchanges. So to your point, when
we do have sharps come on. When we do have
guys who are line shopping, who are price tensitive betters,
they do come on and they say, hey, you know
I like it, but you know, maybe I could go
pay a bit less over it, you know, xys the exchange.
And what I tell them is that's fine, Like, look,
we're never going to be the cheapest. You know. I
(12:46):
think if some people had their way, we would we
would be free, you know, we would not charge any feeds, right,
And so it's a it's a delicate balance between wanting
to make the user happy but also running a business, right,
you want to make money and scale. You know, what
I would tell you and what I tell other people
who are listening to this is we are not the
cheapest out there. For sure. I would say we are
(13:07):
still relatively cheap, especially when you compare it to the
traditional books. And then you have to ask yourself whether
or not that extra quote unquote fee And again it's
three percent compared to you know, the nine to ten
percent traditional book. You ask yourself if the extra features
on cut are worth it, and my answer would be yes,
the social features we actually have rewards, we get cash
(13:31):
back on every single bet that you make, we give
referral bonuses. We give all these different you know kind
of Hey, take a bet for plus two hundred odds
or more and you get, you know, some coins at
which you can redeem for cash back. We have all
these other features that I do think are worth that
three percent fee. And again, we're never going to be free.
We have to. We have a business to run. And
so in my head I think we we we sitted
a good enough spot because I guess we could always
(13:53):
go lower if we wanted to, or tiered if we
wanted to, versus if we would have started a zero
or close to zero. It's very tough to increase time.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
As you guys are watching the Sharp report. Remember you
guys can go and download the Betting pros app if
you have not done so. It's a great place to
be able to track your bets with sportsbook Sink, automatically
track your bets across all major sportsbooks in one spot.
Easily monitor your bet performance by sport bet type, including
game picks, props, and parlays. Customized betting systems are available
as well. For winning trends and proper opportunities. You can
(14:22):
get a seven day free trial with the Betting Pros
Premium that you can go and do all sorts of
fun stuff with prop betcheat sheet and propbt analyzer. You
go and download the app Bettingpros dot Com slash apps,
use the promo code juice, and you get a seven
day free trial when you go to the upgrade screen,
that's where you insert the word juice for a seven
day free trial.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Okay, let's walk through a bet, all right.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So I have an idea, right, I want to say,
coming up at the Open Championship, I believe that an
American's gonna win.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
The Open Championship.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
And I look at a sportsbook and the odds are
minus one p fifty on an American to win the
Open Championship. I want to go and offer that to
somebody cheaper at minus one twenty.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
How does it work? How do I get that bet
to go on? Cut? I play on cut.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
So I'll start by saying that we are constantly improving
our market offering, and we actually recently hired someone to
start putting up a lot more markets for us. You know,
historically we've been your traditional football, baseball, basketball, you know,
hockey type of type of vetting markets. But now we're
working on what i'll call more esoteric marks. Right, So
(15:32):
first thing is do we already have it up? If not,
it's a very simple process. You go to our home
page and actually a couple couple places across the app,
there's a button that says request to bet. Can't miss it.
You press request a bet. There's a short form, Hey,
this is what I want to see. Here are the
odds that I think are fair. We receive a notification immediately,
and then we can put that put that bet up
(15:53):
on the app. From there, it's as simple as finding
that bet on our games tab. So you go to
the games page games tabuh, you search for that and
then you actually have two options. Number one, you can
create your own bet right or number two, you could
actually see if anyone has already posted the bet you know,
for that market, and you could accept that bet when
you create your own bet. It's very important to point
(16:14):
out that all of our odds are fully customizable. So
to your point a second ago, you know, if you
see I forget what numbers you use? Plus one? Yeah? Yeah,
Let's say you know you got plus one fifty for
a specific you know player and the jams ship. If
you want plus one sixty, it's the simplest clicking a
button that says custom odds and then you can input
your own odds for that and then you click submit
(16:36):
that bet. This post to the community, and then someone
else can take the other side of that bet.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
How unique can I get?
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Can I bet on like my member guest? Can I
create a market for a hole in one for me
and my bolt? Like four of my friends are playing
golf and we're going to go who shoots the lowest round?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Like?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
How crazy can I get?
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah? So, look, when we started putting that, that was
the goal, right. The goal is to say, hey, the people, friends, groups,
group chats, whatever, people are already doing this right, and
there needs to be a more efficient way to do that.
Take fantasy football for instance. You know, I've got you've
got your group chat where your buddies talking back and
forth about fantasy football. Then you have to pay each
(17:19):
other via venmo each week or you know, at the
beginning of the season hopefully, and then you have a
complete separate, you know mechanism usually Yahoo or esp or
whatever to actually track all that. So from its inception,
we aimed to be the platform or the app that
could do all three. Right, you have the bet, you
have the markets, you have the record keeping. Number two,
(17:40):
you have the bet settlement, right, and we actually take
care of every single bet settlement as soon as the
bet is over, within a minute, every bet is settled
and you receive your money. And then number three, we
have the social aspect as well. So from the beginning
we have always aspired to be the one stop shop, right,
and so to your point, that includes personal bet and
(18:02):
so as of right now, look, I'll be very transparent
about this. It is not a large portion of our
app these quote unquote personal vets, but it is getting bigger, right,
And this process looks a little bit like this, maybe
I should say roadmap looks a little bit like this.
So right now, we take a lot of publicly verifiable stuff, right,
pop culture politics, you know, just fun stuff like that. Right,
(18:24):
we already put that up next and well currently and
also what we're working on right now are finding existing
communities that want to monetize their audience via vetting markets.
So as an example, we have a partnership with a
company called Roast battle League. Right, Roast Battle League literally
(18:44):
you know, celebrity roasts like comedy roasts, right, so they're
actually roast Battle League is a league where they have
different roasts in different cities. They will literally have multiple comedians.
Then they'll have a judging panel, then they have an audience,
and so they go through comedians roast each other. The
judges say, oh, I think comedian A one, comedian B one, whatever.
The audience gets to vote on it, and they were like, hey,
(19:07):
we want love for our audience to be able to
bet on this, and so we are partnering with groups
like that, companies like that, brand like that to quickly
put up markets and actually have the audience, the community,
the followers bet on whatever that brand wants to bet on. Right.
And then the next step, which we're also working on
this parallel, would be the bet that you mentioned a
(19:29):
second ago. Right. You know, you and your buddies are
at a golf tournament, like, hey, what anyone you hit
the pen today? You know who has the longest drive?
Things like that, And to answer your question, yes, we
can put those up, but we're working on a more
streamlined and scalable way so that you could create that
bet quickly and instead of us having to actually accept
or confirm that bet. You could actually just have that
(19:50):
confirmed on your end and it only shows up on
your app. What's your buddies app?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
So let me play Devil's I think, give just one second.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Because we all have that one friend that maybe a
bit of a not the most on the up and
up tip of dude.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
We all know him, whoever he may be.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Who gets to determine if it's not publicly very viable,
who gets to determine that that's what actually happened.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And that's the crux of the issue, right, and so
you know that's that's something that we have not perfected,
and I don't think you ever will perfect that, right.
What we've currently are our current solution would be some
sort of consensus mechanism right where you know, you pick
a third party arbiter that to say, I'm going to juge,
I'm going to be the judge. You know, both people
have to agree on that person ahead of time, and
(20:33):
in order for the money to be unlocked and that
settlement actually happened, that third party judge has to actually,
you know, confirm that, hey, these are the results that happened, right,
Actually yeah, but but but I mean, look, You're right,
that's and that's I think that's why this has not
that's why this portion of our platform has not scaled
in the way that we expect it to eventually, because
(20:56):
as of right now, it's it is tough to uh,
you know, to do that at at mass scale, right, right.
But look, I mean I think there is also you know,
even taking it bit by bit, like breaking it down, Like,
I think there's a ton of value in having even
just the social component, you know, you and your buddies
and a group on cut, right, even if you're not
(21:18):
actually betting on you know, even if we're not actually
handling the transaction for bets like that, you know, at
least one component of that entire scenario you just mentioned
can be on Cut. And I think for us can
be baby steps. Right, First, get your group chat on Cut,
then we start creating markets for you. Then you create
your own markets, and it'll go from there.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Let me tell you a quick story because I actually
had to stop doing this because on college football Saturdays,
I host a Discord Channel conversation. We have about sixty
thousand people on the Betting Pros Discord channel when we
started it back and I think we started it in
somewhere like August of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I think we started it.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
We had zero so now you know, four years later
off to sixty thousand users. So we started to do
a saturdaying essentially. I called it the Discord Channel bet,
where people got to nominate different plays and they would
I would bring them up on stage on Discord and
they would say, Okay, I like Penn State minus three today,
or I like the over in the Texas Tech Game.
And so I would list all of the plays, like
(22:17):
there'd be seven or eight plays, and we would vote.
They would actually go in and vote as to which
one would be the pick. Sim they lost thirteen straight weeks,
I would bet it, I would put I would put
my own money down. I would bet it. They lost.
They went one in fourteen over a fifteen week schedule,
and I went, I'm done.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I go, that's it.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
That's actually impressive, but I'm done.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So how would we if we did that on Cut?
How would we do that?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Like, what's the way if we wanted to have a
group bet, how do you do it on Cut?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah? Well, first off, I'll start by saying that sounds
like a good idea, and it sounds like you can
make a lot of money. Right, he gets your audience, right.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I told them That became a running joke.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
That became the literally the best fade of the week
was the discord channel bet. I was like, guys, just
bet against this. It's automatic money, like one hundred percent
the audience. It was a great look at how tough
it is to actually gamble because group think doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Doesn't that work? Doesn't not work? Yeah, that's funny. I'm
a quick side. The game seven, every single person was
on the pacers uncut, and literally you saw that turned out.
So yeah, I mean, look to answer your question, one
of two things. Number one, you know, obviously, let's let's
assume that you've created a group, right I cut, You'll
call it your Saturday morning discord whatever. And then from there,
(23:38):
you know, you can you literally can post picks to
your group, right, say, hey, I'm choosing I'm a South
Carolina fan, unfortunately, a long suffering a South Kouinda fan.
South gone is a seven point under your dog. That's
assume I'm taking South Carolina plus seven. You post that
to the group, and then people in the group can
actually take the other side of that bet right, and
it's not just a one person takes all. Actually you
(24:00):
can you can break that down in ten dollars increments,
so multiple people can actually take ten dollars with that bet.
Ten dollars is the minimum right now. But in a
way we called this pooled betting right group betting, where
it doesn't have to necessarily be a one to one.
It could be one to many or what we're also
working on is you know, multiple to multiple, right, where
(24:22):
basically people can quote unquote crowdfund a bet and then
people get take the other side. They can also crowd
fund the opposite side of that as well. But yeah,
it's a fairly simple process where you could, you know,
create whatever bet or you know, use what cuts markets
it's already up, and then post that bet to the
community and then other people can take the other side
of that only within that community.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
I was thinking about this the other day as to
ways of combining fantasy football and sports gambling and how
do you cross over those conversations and cut came to mind.
Have you guys ever had anybody where in their fantasy
football league take bets on either side as to which
lineup is going to win?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Uh? We that's actually not part of our current roadmap.
I do, actually, but that is very interesting. That's essentially
what happens all the time in Faantas football grips, which
is side bets, right thing, you know, the poker side
bets happen a lot, right, Hey, we're competing against essentially
you know, this table of people, but I want to
(25:25):
bet against you who can have a better hand. And
so that's a very common occurrence, right is these derivatives,
for lack of a better word, these derivative vets, these
prop bets, these side bets, and that's huge. And I
will tell you flatly, I'm honest to a fault. I'll
tell you flatly, we don't have a ton of that
right now. But that is exactly the type of stuff
we want to have going forward. And that's again when
(25:45):
we talk about social that's the exact type of you know,
thing that we have on the roadmap, thing that we
envision for the future, which is you and your buddies,
you and your discord followers, you and your audience. You'll
have your own group, you have your own community, and
you have vets and betting markets that are relevant just
to you. No one else knows about. No one else
cares about, but you and your friends and your followers
(26:06):
and your audience want to make these bets. And this
is a perfect place to have a one stop shop
to make those bets, settle on those bets, and have
a lot of fun in the process.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
It's very very interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Okay, last topic, and it's kind of a thirty thousand
foot view as to where we are from a gambling perspective,
a US gambling perspective, sports betting perspective. You guys are
in a unique silo when you look at the country
and you look at sweep Steak sports books, you look
at social sports books, you look at Calshien prediction markets.
(26:38):
What's your take on the overall ecosystem? Like, is are
we in a good place right now in the country?
Are we all over the place?
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Like?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
What's your look as a gambler, as a sports better
what's your feeling about the industry as a whole.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
This would take thirty minutes and probably four or five
drinks for me to really really tell you how I feel.
I'll try to keep it high level, Okay, what I
will tell you this and I'll start with cut first
and then I'll back up. So we operate in a
very niche tradition, in a very nuanced position, which is
to say, we are a peer to peer vetting platform
(27:11):
that has social features that allows you to bet on
things beside the sports. So we don't currently we're not sweepstakes,
we are not daily fantasy. We're actually a skill based game.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
We have our legal opinion, we have our regulatory he's
crossed and I've dot it. But the industry is changing, right,
and so the goalposts are constantly shifting. I'm very familiar
with some of your other interviews. You know, you have
a lot of bright minds in the industry who you know,
all have opinions on how this is working. And what
I'll tell you is this, in twenty eighteen, when they said, hey,
(27:45):
let's let the states decide, I don't think they envision
what we have now, which is, on one hand, you
have essentially a bit of a capitalist you know, hey,
if one state wants to do it one way and
one state wants to do the other, I mean, maybe
the marketing decide. The problem is they are so vastly
(28:05):
different that it's not working, right, And the and and
and a bigger problem is the fact that a lot
of the people who are writing the writing the rules,
writing the laws are in the back pockets of the
probably hopefully I don't get in trouble here, are in
the back pockets of a lot of the big boys, right.
And so unfortunately, there has not been a lot of
progress downstream when I say downstream, in the startups and
(28:28):
the you know, tangential type of offerings in the innovation right.
And so what we really have seen is essentially a
duopoly at the top and the traditional books. And so
what we're now seeing is a for better for worse.
Are startups and you know, medium sized companies who are saying, well,
(28:49):
we're going to try a different way and see what happens, right,
And so it's a lot of whack a mole that's
going on right now. And on one hand, it's frustrating
because startups like ourselves, we don't have a ton of guidance.
But there's really no way for us to compete against
the big boys. If you're saying, hey, you got to
buy a license for five million dollars or ten million dollars,
(29:10):
that's not going to happen. That's whoever wrote those were
very near sighted. They wanted a quick money grab, and
now they're having to pay the price. Right. And you
see this in Illinois right now. Allnoy just introduced that
the fdditional tax. It's like the people that are running
these laws, they do not understand the ecosystem, and they
don't want to under the ecosystem right. They want to
(29:30):
make as much money as possible and squeeze as much
juice out of their existing limits as they can, instead
of inviting everyone to the table and saying, hey, let's
work out a framework that works for everybody. And I
think because of all that you've seen the prediction markets recently,
who are essentially trying to circumnavigate everything, right, And look,
I think, and I know you have your own opinions
(29:52):
about that. I'll say this, I'm not mad at them whatsoever.
I'm not sure if it's going to work. It may
may not. I'm not mad at them for trying. I
think what we're going to see the next year is
going to be a bit of a clash of the Titans,
where the called the old Guard, the status quo, the
DraftKings and fanduels. They're not going to put up with
(30:13):
new people coming in and saying, hey, we went to
the CFTC, we went above you. Actually we don't need
your permission anymore. And I don't think that's going to
be a pretty a pretty battle. I think there's one
train of thought that says that you can't beat them,
join them. And I think you're already seeing some some
some murmurs of like, hey, maybe FanDuel partners with Calshi,
who knows, maybe Fandel creates their own. But I say
(30:35):
that to say I've been rambling a bit here, But
I say that to say the existing framework does not work.
The state by state, state by state approach is not working. Now.
On the flip side, I don't think anyone wants a
full centralized, you know, governance where someone in Washington decides, hey,
(30:56):
if you want to participate in the sports betting and
shure you need ten million dollars minimum. That's all also
not going to work. The unfortunate reality is that it
need to go somewhere in the middle. But I do
think that at some point they're going to have to
have a tiered system where they say, hey, if you're
this particular model and you're this particular size, you have
one set of rules, and we're going to encourage and
foster innovation downstream and the downstream companies, the startups, they
(31:19):
have a different set of rules, and perhaps you shure
that out and hey, you get bigger, you want access
to more states, then yes you can pay more. But
I think the genie's out of the bottle with innovation.
Consumers are now seeing that they have options, especially in
non traditional sports betting states, and I think it's gonna
(31:39):
be tough to put that back in so sim we
feel like I went around a lot there. Sorry, but no,
it's good. Like I.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Think a lot of people. I think a lot of
people will agree with you about where we are and
what we're doing and where we need to go. Because
my last question will be about the startup world for
people like your company. You guys got involved with this.
Now if you were say starting cut today, could you
(32:11):
start cut today?
Speaker 3 (32:15):
And in some senses it's a lot easier because I
think that betting has been welcomed a bit more then
it will. I mean, look, even as recently the year ago,
betting as the terminology's still very taboo. You know, you
talked a lot of investors. I can't touch that that's
a BCE, you know, you know you talk to payment process. Oh,
(32:37):
I can't touch that. It's it's very mainstream now, So
in some senses it's better. Other ways, Look, it's, in
my opinion's very oversaturated at this point. You know, I
think we we were lucky enough to even though I
feel like we were behind the eight ball for a
long time and in some ways still are, We're lucky
to have started when we started, right you know. Now,
(32:59):
imagine starting a fantasy a daily fantasy app. Now, it'd
be impossible because they're literally literally hundreds of daily fantasy
app out there right now. So yeah, I mean, I
think it goes both ways. Look, if if I'd have
known the heartache and the uh the gray hairs, it
would have given me, you know, and the heartburn, what
I what I start all over? Maybe not, But you know,
(33:20):
I will say that I think this industry is still
in the very early innings, you know, and I do
think that that a lot of innovation is still left
to you know, still going to happen. I think it's
just a question of whether or not the powers that be,
And when I say that, I mean the service providers,
the lobbyists, the regulators, the government, the congressmen, congresswomen, if
(33:41):
they are willing to foster that innovation and foster these
new ideas because ultimately the consumer will benefit from that,
and that's who the focus should be on. Right The
focus should be on you as a consumer, feeling confident
in the you're using, you know, having a wide variety
(34:03):
of products to use, options at police and as of
right now, a lot of the stuff we're seeing from
the powers that be, I think is not conducive to
all of that and is not going to be very
user friendly, which you know, for better for worse, creates
another problem, which is kind of the gray market in
black market areas, So we don't want that.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Sim Harmon is the CEO of Cut. Thank you for
joining us here today on the Sharp Report. We appreciate you.
If folks want to go and get an account, how
can they do? Help and go and do so?
Speaker 3 (34:38):
But dot com Ku t T dot com. You can
also visit us on the app store iOS you can
just search for Cut ku t T. We are not
on the Google play Store, but if you have an
Android or a desktop, you can visit play dot cut
dot com to download there. But yeah, I tell everyone
cut dot com. We have download links for both, so
(35:01):
very cool.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
If you guys liked this conversation, hit the like button
tell us what you think of the comment section.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
We're back every single month.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Next month for another episode of the Sharp Report here
with Betting Pros.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Thanks for listening to the Betting Pros podcast. Follow us
on x and TikTok at Betting Pros and Instagram at
Betting Pros NFL.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Also subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
slash Betting Pros
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