{"id":3075,"date":"2026-06-11T13:18:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T13:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/?p=3075"},"modified":"2026-06-17T13:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:19:10","slug":"bettingstartups-capital-on-what-makes-them-write-a-check-and-what-sends-them-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/bettingstartups-bettingjobs-partnerships\/bettingstartups-capital-on-what-makes-them-write-a-check-and-what-sends-them-away\/","title":{"rendered":"BettingStartups Capital on what makes them write a check\u2014and what sends them away"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><b>The news:<\/b> Three months into <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bettingstartups.com\/capital?utm_source=news.bettingstartups.com&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=this-week-edge-markets-courts-29-2m-for-payment-rails\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BettingStartups Capital<\/a>, Jesse Learmonth and Paris Smith took live questions from founders during a Defy the Odds Office Hours session\u2014covering due diligence, AI, founder qualities, and where they think the market is getting ahead of itself. The fund writes $100K\u2013$250K checks into early-stage companies across sports betting, iGaming, and B2B infrastructure. At the time of the session, they&#8217;d reviewed close to 100 deals and closed five.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><b>Zoom in:<\/b> At the earliest stage, the pair said they&#8217;re evaluating founders, not businesses\u2014when there&#8217;s no revenue or KPIs to analyze. The framework they apply centers on four traits borrowed from Smith&#8217;s Pinnacle-era hiring philosophy: hungry, humble, smart, and passionate. On prediction markets specifically, Learmonth flagged two concerns: valuations he described as disconnected from market reality, and legal uncertainty around whether sport event contracts in the U.S. are here to stay\u2014&#8221;it is not settled science,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><b>Why it matters:<\/b> BettingStartups Capital is an early-stage fund inside a small industry, which means the people writing the checks are often just a few calls away from the operators and partners founders are name-dropping in their decks. That dynamic gives the fund real reference leverage\u2014and makes reputation matter more than it might elsewhere. The prediction market skepticism is also worth noting: when one of the more active early-stage funds in the space is flagging valuation bubbles and legal risk, founders in that category should be paying attention.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.bettingstartups.com\/subscribe\">Like what you see? SUBSCRIBE to BettingStartups to access the full article!<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The news: Three months into BettingStartups Capital, Jesse Learmonth and Paris Smith took live questions from founders during a Defy the Odds Office Hours session\u2014covering due diligence, AI, founder qualities, and where they think the market is getting ahead of itself. The fund writes $100K\u2013$250K checks into early-stage companies across sports betting, iGaming, and B2B&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bettingstartups-bettingjobs-partnerships"],"acf":[],"post_author_name":"","post_authors_type":"","post_authors_from_team_members":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3079,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions\/3079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/3078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}