Founder's Story - I Bootstrapped OddsJam to $160M—Everything I Learned Along the Way | Ep 221 with Alexander Monahan founder of OddsJam

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Alex Monahan, Stanford engineer turned sports betting entrepreneur, joins Founder's Story to reveal how he bootstrapped OddsJam—dubbed the Bloomberg Terminal for Sports Betting—to a $160 milli...on exit. From obsessing over data to outworking every competitor, Alex shares the gritty journey from side hustle to acquisition, the power of YouTube for growth, and why he’s still not done building. If you’ve ever wondered what it really takes to win in a high-stakes, high-growth niche—this is the playbook.Key Discussion PointsThe Obsession That Sparked a Startup: Why Alex's love for data, poker, and probability planted the seed for OddsJam.From Reddit to Revenue: How early Reddit posts and $6 subscriptions helped them land their first customers.The $20K MRR YouTube Days: Why DIY content outperformed influencers—and how one video changed the game.The Math Behind the Millions: How understanding sports betting odds led to a product users couldn’t find anywhere else.Exit Without Burnout: Why selling didn’t change his life—and how growing slowly kept him grounded.Building a Data Moat: How they acquired their data provider and outpaced competitors with speed and accuracy.Founder Lessons in Focus: Why juggling multiple startups never works—and why you need to outwork everyone.Key TakeawaysDon’t build for hype—build what you wish existed.Your edge is what you obsess over when no one’s watching.Distribution is a weapon—master YouTube, Twitter, and content that teaches.Staying focused beats being flashy—especially when billion-dollar markets are on the line.Closing ThoughtsOddsJam wasn’t built on luck. It was built on obsession, precision, and the relentless grind of a founder who knew where his edge was—and ran with it. Whether you’re launching your first business or gunning for your own exit, Alex’s journey is a reminder: master your niche, own your platform, and never stop betting on yourself.Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com* Check out Square: https://square.com/go/founderAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Starting point is 00:01:06 at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash founders. Hey everyone welcome back to Founders Story. We got an incredible episode. Everyone has been asking, they want to find out what it's like to sell your business for over a hundred million. So that's why we have Alex Monahan, the engineer turned entrepreneur, graduated from Stanford and founded Odds Jam, which has been titled the Bloomberg Terminal of Sports Betting
Starting point is 00:01:36 and sold for $160 million back in December, which is insane. Alex, that's like everyone's dream. If I could sell my company for $160 million, I'll be pretty happy. So let's go back though. Let's go back in time. What was the spot for entrepreneurship for you? I mean, honestly, I had a ton of, I feel like in college, you know, or just when I was younger, everyone has ideas for businesses, but they never took off. I'd experiment in college with, oh, I should try this. I should try this. I never
Starting point is 00:02:12 really liked any of the things I was working on. I also feel like I never really had an edge, but the way odds jam came to be is I took my first job out of college. I've always loved gambling. I love poker. You know, with the $14 in my Robinhood account, I liked like trading stocks, just honestly anything that was gambling, making bets with my friends. So I took a job in trading in Pennsylvania
Starting point is 00:02:40 at this company called Susquehanna and sports betting legalized, like right when I took the job. So, I mean, there was probably a period of six months before really sports betting really took off. We're in the office, you know, at a trading firm, people talked about their wives, what they were doing in the weekend. But then like, I mean, everybody, these guys, you know, traders, right, like they're trading calls, puts, natural gas, these complex financial products, a ton of people got interested in sports betting. So it kind of became the talk of the office. And
Starting point is 00:03:15 honestly, I started sports betting, and I had a lot of resources like my bosses at the time, you know, these guys were really successful in trading these complex financial products and they kind of taught me a lot about sports betting. So I started to bet a ton myself, like, I mean, tons, like hours and hours and hours a day. I would get home from work. I was in a new city. I didn't really know anybody. I would gamble, gamble, gamble, talk to my work colleagues, go watch games with them, gamble, gamble, gamble. And to be clear, this wasn't just like, oh, let's bet on the Lakers. We like LeBron. Like data-driven sports betting, like, you know, when there was literally nothing to do, I spent a ton of time sports betting researching it. And ultimately, it was just like, I think, you know, as more states start to legalize, there's a huge opportunity to bring actually good products to sports betting. Because a lot of the stuff I would look for because I'm a huge sports better myself, I used to bet tons. I mean, I was gambling very seriously for two years
Starting point is 00:04:26 before we even started the business. So I was like, this is what I would want. There's nothing like it. All the content is horrible. It's just guys flexing Rolexes and Ferraris and claiming, you know, they can see the future and know if the Lakers are going to win the the, the championship. Like, so I kind of thought like, wow, there's really a data driven, there's a need for like data, right? There's hundreds of sports books launching in the U S basically a Bloomberg
Starting point is 00:04:55 terminal for gambling for sports betters. Cause nobody has access to data right now. And also all the content sucks. So there needs to be somebody in some company that's actually putting out good content on the math behind sports betting, what is plus 200? What is minus 200? What's the difference? What's the difference in win probability? How does a sportsbook calculate parlay odds like all this basic stuff, right? The math behind sports betting, nobody did content on it. There was no data in sports betting So we kind of started odds jam to try to be the Bloomberg terminal for sports betting real-time odds from every buck Consolidated packaged into different pools at affordable pricing for consumers To ideally try to help them, you know become better sports betters We hear this a lot with other successful entrepreneurs you You find a problem that you want to be solved
Starting point is 00:05:48 and then you solve that problem knowing that other people probably want the same thing that you want yourself and then you build it based on that. So you build this, you know the concept, the idea, you've been in the space, you start to implement it. Some of the hardest things is getting those first customers or first clients How was that process for you in the beginning? Scary, I mean, you know, I quit my job which I mean I was young right I was
Starting point is 00:06:15 24 25 at the time. So like we kind of thought about it my co-founder and I if we could make 30k MRR a month 30 K a month, like, and we can travel, you know, I can go to Arizona, like, I mean, it's so cold in Pennsylvania, it's always snowing. It's like, if I can get out of here, get out of this corporate rut, getting up at seven to like go into the office, like, and I liked my job, to be clear, I love gambling. So I really enjoyed trading. But like, I was I definitely, be clear, I love gambling, so I really enjoyed trading. But I definitely, I'm not the biggest fan of Pennsylvania.
Starting point is 00:06:49 I don't know anybody there. I don't have family there, whatever. So I would say it was really scary. We just kind of grinded. We made some posts on Reddit. We made some posts in sports betting groups. And the product initially was priced at like six bucks. And very quickly, we started getting subscribers.
Starting point is 00:07:06 So then we increased the price for new subscribers. And really nothing changed. We kept getting, if we'd make a post for $6 or $50, same amount of people kept coming in. So we started reinvesting a little bit of that money into influencers. We paid a guy to make a YouTube video, got like 70 customers in a day, which at the time, you know, 50 bucks a
Starting point is 00:07:32 month, like, I mean, it doesn't obviously seem massive, but 3.5 K MRR, it's like, oh my gosh, like, we just need four more of this. And that's kind of how we started it and got our first customers. And then from there, I would say the hardest part, we stagnated for a while, like 20, 30 K MRR revenue per month for like four, four months maybe. Um, and we had this guy who basically signed up for a product and then he churned and was like, Hey, I have a bunch of experience running subscription businesses, whatever reach out to me.
Starting point is 00:08:05 I'm happy to give you tips. Your product doesn't work for me in Florida because we don't really have Fandual, any of these sports books, but I'm happy to give you some tips. And he basically told us like, why are you only paying influencers? Like both of you guys are such babies, essentially. Like if you're not willing to put your face your own face behind the product You know go back to your old jobs and it was harsh advice in some ways, but it was also very true Right where it's like oh like so then we started doing our own content. I was always scared. I never use social media
Starting point is 00:08:39 I'd never done a YouTube video. I'd never made you know a done a YouTube video. I'd never made, you know, a tech talk. I'd never gone on an interview, never used Instagram. So then it was like, okay, like, I'll start making some tutorials about the product. I don't have to wait months for some of these influencers to get it done. I mean, some of these guys, it's like, you pay him $3,000. It's like, oh, like, you know, whatever, I decided to go on vacation, I'll get it done a month later And that's really when we really started to take off. I mean there were days we were gaining $20,000 MRR a day just off a YouTube video when we had a very small channel so when you when you were looking at this and Deciding where that you should put this content or the emphasis if you were putting it into many places
Starting point is 00:09:24 When you when you figure that out, where did you hone in on? Did you say, okay, we need to double down on this specific social platform or we need to spread and do more social platforms? What was working for you? Yeah, I'd say we started on YouTube because honestly, because that's where our initial influencers were. We started working with YouTubers who would make tutorials. So when we saw saw them when they actually did the
Starting point is 00:09:51 work and did the video and didn't do a horrible job, we were getting a ton of customers, which is why I started with making YouTube videos. And then it was kind of, you know, all in on YouTube. I mean, there were days I was printing four or five. All I was doing was YouTube. I would start different channels, some about fantasy, and I would just print YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. At some point, I don't want to say got tapped,
Starting point is 00:10:17 but we stopped growing as quickly. So then I got on Twitter, and we saw kind of another huge spike off the bat. Really the journey from like zero to maybe a hundred and fifty thousand Twitter followers, just talking about the product, giving out bets with the product, providing a lot of free value, which I'm a big believer in, is if you do a lot of free content about the way you're finding bets and why people should think like this. You know, you gain a lot of credibility and you're providing a lot of free value to people. So we started with YouTube, then went to Twitter, then went to Twitch, TikTok, whatever. Now we kind of do all them.
Starting point is 00:10:57 YouTube and Twitter, I would say are most important to us or our main platforms. But like, really anywhere we think sports betters live we want to be. Yeah, it's very interesting that you've seen the transitions of sports betting being from something that I didn't hear much about it. A lot of states started legalizing it and then I'm seeing like ESPN and there's networks now that have sports betting integrated with a lot of the shows.
Starting point is 00:11:26 How has the transition be as sports betting has become bigger and bigger and mainstream media traditional outlets have started to pick it up? How did that impact odds jam? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of we definitely got I don't want to say we didn't do a good job, but it definitely helped to be early, right? By that, I mean, we had money to reinvest in kind of the more states that legalized sports betting, the second estate legalizes gambling, you have all of these multi-billion
Starting point is 00:11:58 dollar companies shoving, I mean shoving, it's every billboard, every TV ad TV ad every sports broadcast every commercial break, right? Like shoving sports betting down people's throats So as more and more people start to gamble more people naturally search out of bed on sports on YouTube Which drives more people to us which ultimately increases our revenue? So in many ways we piggybackbacked by providing free content. We piggybacked off of the, I mean, just gross advertising budgets of sportsbooks, who they do the hard work of spending billions of combined dollars a quarter to try to gain market share and get people to gamble.
Starting point is 00:12:41 And then we just step in and provide the actually valuable content, tutorials, all that stuff. So it's been huge. It's everywhere. And I mean, sports betting, especially obviously, obviously, it depends, you know, what state you're in. Some states still don't have online regulated sports betting. But I mean, you know, I mean, when I was in Pennsylvania even, when I still had my full-time job and started to gamble, I feel like it was everywhere. I mean, just billboards, TV commercials, it was everywhere.
Starting point is 00:13:13 It's like every billboard is sports betting or an attorney. Exactly. For injury or sports betting. Exactly. Get in the car accident, yeah, exactly. Yeah, when you looked at yourself and what you had to change personally as the company continued to grow What changes did you have to make? Yeah, I mean at first it's a lot of it was just being scrappy doing things I honestly still wouldn't say I'm comfortable with like I really liked in many ways before odds jam
Starting point is 00:13:44 You know living a very private life I gamble when I want to gamble. So now just kind of like having to do content consistently like that was in some ways a learned skill but also just a learned barrier or like a barrier I had to overcome a fear in some ways like a lot of people have fears of public speaking, putting themselves out there. I definitely did too. So something like that, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna have some people who don't like you who think your advice sucks and you're an idiot and you lose them a bet and they're mad. So some stuff like that at first and then kind of just transitioning to,
Starting point is 00:14:23 you know, actually being a founder, right, Hiring, right? Um, I think that that was challenging at first hiring and managing, you know, I just left college, I've never managed somebody I've never had to hire and make hard decisions hiring and firing, you know, capital allocation, do we want to get another engineer? Do we want to get a growth person? Do we want to build this feature or this feature? So you know, in some ways to, you know, at odds jam, like we we acquired a few smaller businesses, one of them
Starting point is 00:14:54 was our main competitor, initially, and just like how to think about those things, how to how to try to, you know, we acquired our initial data provider, which kind of really is what allowed the business to have a data advantage, to have the fastest data, the most comprehensive data, and really, in some ways, help us have the best product on the market by far. So I would say all those things I never expected, but just kind of like figured it out. And again, I think like if you're trying to do the right thing, and you roughly know what you want to do, hiring isn't that bad, right? Like I've created content now
Starting point is 00:15:35 for odds jam. We've hired some some people who who do content, whether they're contractors or whatever. And like, I kind of know, I'm no expert, but I kind of know what works, what works for us, what platforms work for us, what messaging. So you can kind of tell when someone resonates. At the same time, I used to write some of our marketing emails. I kind of know what works, what gets clicks, what subject lines, you know, all that sort of stuff. So when we're when we went out tire an email marketer, who we now have like a full time employee just writes emails, sales and marketing, like I kind of know the type of person who I think will be a good fit. So a little bit of a learned skill, but I feel
Starting point is 00:16:18 like a lot of it happens naturally. I had a mentor once tell me, be an inch deep and a mile wide. Know a little bit about a lot of things so you can tell. If you hire a vendor and you don't want to get screwed over, know at least enough. I think in the digital marketing space, that's always something I have a big proponent on is I want to know a little bit about how to do ads, SEO, because you just don't know. I mean, it's really easy, I think, to get screwed over as a founder many times. Let's go to the date when you heard or whatever, however it went down in terms of the acquisition.
Starting point is 00:16:58 So when you were on a call in a meeting, whatever that was like, and you found out that you got this offer, whatever that was like, and you found out that you got this offer. What was that like? Yeah, I'd say we knew, like we'd known the founders of like gambling.com for a while, kind of their executive team, like I had dinner with them. So it's not like it was a complete shock or like, who are these guys? I've never heard of this company, you know, they're definitely one of the leading companies, there aren't that many public companies, right in
Starting point is 00:17:28 the sports betting industry, who are in sports books, like we all know DraftKings, but what other companies kind of exist in the ecosystem. I'd also say like people, maybe the first time someone reached out and was like, Oh, you have a cool business, like would love to buy it was like kind of exciting and you got a rush. But most of the time, it's like, complete bs and also, if anything, we turn we just kind of like got out the noise for most of the business. Because I think like, it's hard
Starting point is 00:17:59 to be really heads down and focused focused on growth, building long term value really focused on driving customer's value. If you're also like running around, constantly thinking about this type of stuff. But I think we realized at Oddjam, like, you know, there's probably more we can do and we can grow faster and get our data more places. If we have the right partner who's really well connected
Starting point is 00:18:24 all throughout the world, because we're mainly at odds jam, right a US business, but like, how can we expand to Canada, Europe, get our data in the hands of other companies as well. And we kind of saw it as a fit. So I would say it was exciting, but also like, you know, we had good bankers, we had good lawyers during the sale process. So really what I tried to do is stay heads down as much as possible, right? And just focus on the day to day, continuing to grow the business, have a solid foundation. So if the deal did fall through, like we still have a business, and we still have a lot of opportunity. And we're executing on the right ideas to continue to grow into next into, you know, 2025,
Starting point is 00:19:10 2026, whatever. So I would say it was exciting, but it just kind of like happened because I tried to keep it out of my mind until literally the day the deal is done is like, this is happening, maybe but like, I'm operating, so I don't go through these huge emotional swings or whatever, I want to be happy in either situation and feel like we're going to crush it and like continue to dominate this industry whether it happens or not. So I tried to largely keep it out of my mind. Like it's really hard, I feel like to stay
Starting point is 00:19:42 focused on the day today grinding to grow the business if you're imagining yourself on a yacht. And then if the deal doesn't go through, you're going to be miserable. So I just try to isolate it and be like, this is cool. Lawyers, bankers are working on it. I'm helping. I'm joining some meetings. But my number one priority is making sure we're driving customer's value, continuing
Starting point is 00:20:04 to grow the business, executing on the right ideas, have the right product roadmap, have the right team, designers, product people, engineers, whatever. I think most business owners, at least in the U S an exit is really a pinnacle or peak moment. It's, it's what a lot of them are going for. So when you look back at, I know you were at the 30 million ARR mark for revenue. When you look back at what attracted them to it,
Starting point is 00:20:33 beyond the revenue that you were making, was there anything else that companies look at when they want to acquire a company? Yeah, I mean, I think profit margin, right? Like revenue is obviously great, but there are some companies, right, who are who are unprofitable. So at Audsium, we were, you know, profitable. And also, I just think there's a lot of expansion opportunities. Like, again, we are and it's hard to put a finger on some of those things like how to quantify. But
Starting point is 00:21:02 I do think the company has a lot of room to run. We have probably the best data in the industry. In my opinion, we've really only penetrated the U S which is a tiny sports betting market relative to the rest of the world. If you think about, you know, the U S just legalized sports betting. It's not in Texas, right? It's not even in some of the biggest States in the US. So I think we have a lot of room to run, there's still more states to legalize. So
Starting point is 00:21:31 there's still a lot of growth in the industry ahead. And I think also we have a good team, right? Like this is, we have a tech advantage, we have a data advantage. And we also have a great team, where we're not reliant on one person, I could die tomorrow, and odds jam would be could still be super successful We have a great head of growth. We have a great head of product. We have a great CTO You know, we have people executing on the right ideas. We're all aligned on what we're trying to build so I mean obviously the financial metrics are important, but at the same time, I think it's just like growth potential of the industry.
Starting point is 00:22:09 And like, you know, again, like we didn't try every marketing channel, right? Like we are largely a US company. We never really even tried to expand into other countries with much more developed sports betting markets. Horse racing, you think about like, we never even tried to expand into other countries with much more developed sports betting markets, horse racing, you think about like, we never even tried. And like, there's definitely opportunity and room to run, you know, kind of for the business, which I think is obviously important to gambling.com or acquire. And there's a lot of places you can use the data. I mean, we constantly have startups, media companies who
Starting point is 00:22:44 want to include betting widgets now in their articles and stuff like that Because again like sports betting really has taken over so much So if you're a media site nowadays like you know You kind of want these types of things Because there's money to make in sports betting and most importantly more of your consumers Want to see this type of information because most of them are gambling at this point. Yeah, I know a lot of people in 20s and 30s. Before I would have thought it was maybe 40, 50, and a 50, 60 up. I know many people, 20s and 30s that are into this and they're like, they're diehard sports betting or sports fans that are really getting into it. So we've had a recent entrepreneur on who had a
Starting point is 00:23:27 significant exit like yours. They didn't remain much afterwards. They got very depressed and they had to walk through, you know, what do they do next in their life? And I thought that was an interesting take on it. How was the post acquisition for you? And where do you spend most of your time now? Yeah, I would say I mean, I would say odds jam like. We kind of I mean, I love my job, right? I like sports and I like gambling. I'm a sports nut. I, you know, grew up playing sports, obviously was not good enough
Starting point is 00:24:02 to to play at any actually competitive level. but like I enjoy sports. I love gambling. So those aren't things that are faded. It's not like I'm miserable. You know, I'm staying on at the acquiring company, we have financial incentives to stay on. And like, you know, I'm happy and I want to continue to see my baby succeed. I do think there's a lot of opportunity to run So in some ways it's like the company sold and like oh your life massively changed in other ways It hasn't really changed. I'm still working in sports on betting at the same, you know in the same thing Overall now I'm a part of a bigger company and really just trying to build the best tools overall, now I'm a part of a bigger company, and really just trying to build the best tools, provide the best data, the best content to sports betters, educate sports betters, bring in new users. So like, in some ways, life hasn't changed that much. Also at odds jam, like, you know, we didn't have
Starting point is 00:24:56 investors. So we never had pressure to sell, we never had pressure in any way. And also, you know, in some ways, what that means is like, we gradually grew into wealth, right? Like we went from a company where my co founder and I right, I said, I think at the start, we wanted to make like 30k a month, right have 15k each to travel. So like going from 30 to 50 to 100 to $1 million a month, like, when you kind of gradually move up in wealth, I feel like there's no like massive change
Starting point is 00:25:30 or like life shift maybe that necessarily happens. Like we're already making good money and could have continued to run the business and be very happy. So in many ways it's like where I'm living, all that sort of stuff hasn't really changed I think I heard yeah I heard like a previous interview with another founder who said something similar is just like I mean if you run like a
Starting point is 00:25:54 Company where you're paying yourself $30,000 salary and doing that for 10 years and then you have an exit like how it can like completely Warp your brain and you start blowing money and then you get depressed and you're partying and you're traveling and doing these crazy things. But kind of at odds jam like, you know, it on my everything happened so slowly. In some ways. I mean, it obviously happened somewhat quickly. But at the same time, things progress slowly, we're like, my life hasn't really
Starting point is 00:26:24 changed. Since the company's been been bought. I mean, maybe a little less pressure in some ways, more pressure in other ways. But overall, I'm still working on the same things, which I like. So overall, I mean, pretty uneventful answer. But I do think it's truth. Yeah that's amazing I mean the fact that you bootstrapped this company and you slowly built it and you slowly built into it you didn't have all that pressure it seems like a lot of people they just really quick to want to take money but don't realize there's gonna be pressure
Starting point is 00:26:59 they can kick get kicked out of their own company there's a lot of people making decisions above them now. They're basically almost working for somebody else in that sense. So the fact that you were able to slowly build this and build into the wealth, I think that's a really fascinating perspective. I have a question around hours worked, burnout balance.
Starting point is 00:27:22 There's a huge debate now around, can I be a founder and see success and work? I don't want to work 15 hours a day. I don't want to get burnt out. I want to have balance. I want to do all these things and still be able. But other people, many successful people we've had on said, no, they had to work 20 hours a day. Their business was all that they could do. Many got divorced, many you had ruined relationships because they were they had to focus so much on the company balance was all that they could do. So what is your perspective on this?
Starting point is 00:27:57 I think most of the burnout has been internal, like frustration with myself, my own performance. Again, I like gambling. I like sports. I watch sports. I gambled as a hobby. So obviously working in sports and gambling is a bit different than, you know, sitting there and just turning on the TV
Starting point is 00:28:16 and opening DraftKings all day. So obviously it's a little different, but in many ways it's like, I never felt burnt out because it's a little different. But in many ways, it's like, I never felt burnt out because it's things I kind of like, like I truly enjoyed to do. I think I would be burnt out if I had to work 40 hours a week in a healthcare job, because I don't care. Like, it's just like, it's not not that I don't care. That sounds horrible. But like, I'm never going to be the guy who's like, not not that I don't care that sounds horrible, but like, I'm never going to be the guy who's like, I just want to grind and
Starting point is 00:28:47 start a medical company. And like, it's just not something I'm super passionate about. I wake up thinking about I think in the shower about and obviously, I think it's super important to society and have a lot of respect for people who work on that type of thing. But like, or like, you know, I'm not some super nerdy electrical engineer, I want to build a better airplane, like I could never do that type of business. I don't know anything about it. But also, like, I'm not interested in it. So like, I
Starting point is 00:29:14 probably will never know anything about it. So I mean, I definitely feel like you have to work a lot. But I do think a lot boils down to to working smart to right? I don't think I mean, I definitely worked more hours at first than I do now, because we didn't have money. So like, you had to do everything right? Sales, email marketing design product, like it was me and my co founder. But I remember the first day we hired our first employee who ended up doing customer support. Cause when our YouTube videos started taking off, we would have, I mean,
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Starting point is 00:33:37 Terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need. 500 messages and emails. And that's when it was like, I'm just overwhelmed. Like in some ways you're super excited. It's like, dude, like I remember looking at my co-founder, went to Florida to visit our, one of our advisors. And I was like, dude, there are like 500 people
Starting point is 00:33:59 who want to put their credit card into our site, but they just have questions. Like that's crazy. So I think in some ways, that was really exciting. But I think like the second we hired our first customer service guy, it's like, in many ways, I started working less right off the bat, but then started working on other things. But I don't know. But at the same time, I do think like if you're not paranoid and grinding, like,
Starting point is 00:34:24 there's always someone who when you're out partying, drinking on 9 p.m. on a Friday, your competitor who sees your success and that you're making money, they're coming after you. And some of them may be stupid and slow or horrible engineers. But like the bigger you get, eventually you're going to have someone really good biting at your, you know, who's coming after you. So I do think like, it is important to outwork the competition, for sure. But I also think it's like, what are
Starting point is 00:34:55 you trying to build? Right? If you're just trying to like make enough money to be happy. But if you're trying to like build a business and outcompete other businesses and take their market share,'re going to have to outwork them. I feel like have So I definitely think like it's hard to start a company if you're not working at least 70 80 hours a week. But also I think the main thing, my perspective is not being distracted. Like, we have competitors who do like four other businesses. It's like, oh yeah, I'm like starting this sports betting company to try to compete with you guys. I also have this radiology thing and it's like, they all may make money and stuff,
Starting point is 00:35:36 but you're never gonna outcompete us as a new player spending 10 hours a week on this, right? Like when I'm working 80 and we have more money and a team working 80 hours a week, each person, like it's going to be pretty hard to beat us. So I do think like picking one thing, if you're really trying to launch a tech company and like take market share from other people, like, I don't know, like, obviously, there's the crazy geniuses, like, Elon Musk, and, you know, whatever, but like that people are always like, well, he can run like six companies. And it's like, yeah,
Starting point is 00:36:13 but like, he's a super genius. And like, you're not I'm not like, we're regular dudes. So like, you got to pick one thing if you want to be good at it, and you want to win at it. I feel like can't play professional basketball, baseball and football, man, people have tried and they weren't very successful. So yeah, I like this saying then after you're you're you mentioned this, only the paranoid will survive. And you have to outwork your competition. I took that away from this. And then another thing that I found that I liked what you just said was you're
Starting point is 00:36:46 really passionate about it but you're also very good at it. Yeah I think there's a thing I could be passionate about something maybe I'm not great at it but if I'm passionate about it and I know I'm great at it and I know what the market wants like you I can work sometimes 15 16 hours a day somebody so you know said to me recently like wow you're working like sometimes 6 a.m. and sometimes 11 p.m. I'm like yeah but I really enjoy it so it's not like burning me out in the sense I really really enjoy what I'm doing so I took that away from you and I hope to one day Alex I'm gonna come back to you when I exit for a hundred
Starting point is 00:37:23 million dollars I'm gonna come back and say look I took to one day Alex, I'm going to come back to you when I exit for $100 million, I'm going to come back and say, look, I took the advice of Alex Monahan and here I'm at. But if he went again, touch with you and then when I find out more information, how can they do so? Yeah, I mean, we can include my email in the description. I can say it now if it's helpful emails best Twitter, I'm on Twitter. It's Alex Monahan 100. So anybody who has questions about whatever sports betting business You know really anything like you can you can DM me on Twitter. My DMs are open email Twitter, whatever This has been great Alex. I learned a lot today
Starting point is 00:37:59 I've been very inspired since the first conversation that we had I can't wait to learn more about Odds Jam, about what you're doing, about what you do after. I'm sure that in a few years from now, you're gonna be doing something else. So we gotta make sure that you come back, tell us what happens then. The life of an entrepreneur that doesn't exit,
Starting point is 00:38:19 that goes through the acquisition and then does something else after. This is like the life cycle of entrepreneurship. And I'm very happy for everything. I can tell you're like a genuine good person. And it really comes out. You have you have great energy. So thank you so much though, for joining us. Yeah, I appreciate it. You have great energy too. So it's been great. Thank you. The Heart and Stroke Lottery $50,000 VIP deadline is May 23. Play for your best chance to win $1 million in Ontario. Buy tickets at heartandstrokelottery.ca. Lottery license RAF 14444518
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