Lee Davy sits down with the CEO of Social Bet Inc., Jason Neubauer, to talk about the early successes of his social betting application Youbetme.
The last time Jason Neubauer was a guest on CalvinAyre, he was preparing to launch his social betting application Youbetme. That was 10-months ago and I have asked him back onto the show to tell me how progress has been.
The last time we last spoke you told me that people had been wagering since the beginning of time. As that trend continued with Youbetme?
“It’s been awesome. Within the first 90 days we broke over 100,000 downloads and hit as high as number five in the app store charts in the US.”
I understand you have been building some impressive relationships with some exciting partners.
“We are starting to understand the benefits of the platform that we have built. Youbetme the product does not limit us, and that’s great. We are working on a white label licensing deal with two of the most famous Vine stars to create a video challenge app, so that’s interesting.
“We are also working with one of the largest gambling operators in France. We are trying to figure out how to make them more mobile and social. Even the long term European guys, who have been around a long time, are curious as to how they can get back into the mobile and social free play that will eventually lead them back to the real money players.”
I can understand the partnership with PMU in France but tell me more about the partnership with stars of Vine.
“The celebrity challenge ideal has been even more validated now because of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. That’s been great for us. Betting really is all about the challenge. You see that there really is a mass-market consumer demand for these things. There are so many different ways to utilize this technology from a peer-to-peer standpoint or a community standpoint.”
What’s the demographic been like?
“Our initial low hanging fruit was heavily weighted towards 18-34 year old males, and they do make up 76% of our demographic. What I didn’t expect was the high number of couples we have using our app. It seems people like challenging each other in relationships.”
You ran a Hackathon. What on earth is a Hackathon?
“We are not an application; we are a platform. So we opened up our API – which is our back end – and hosted a two-day event in Seattle, Washington. You let people take some of your existing infrastructure and create all these different products that maintains the essence of what Youbetme is all about.”
I believe you are also getting excited about League of Legends?
“For me, this is the thing that came out of the Hackathon that I am really excited about. I didn’t even know League of Legends existed until a guy in the Apple store got into a conversation with me. I told him what I did for a living and he said I had to get into the League of Legends. This is bigger than NHL, a little bit under the Superbowl in terms of ratings, and they are betting all day.
“It’s actually not going to be that hard to include an integration. There is a definitive outcome so we make the ease of use for the customer easy. So we will create a tab for them, and if it takes off we may build a real app.”
Are people using Youbetme for real money betting?
“87% of our bets aren’t for real money and this is exactly want we wanted it to be. We wanted to build a social experience. If you look at it for a psychology point of view, you might not get a women to bet $20 on the Superbowl, but if you set a challenge where the loser has to take the winner to dinner then they will go for that.”
What are the types of challenges you are seeing more frequently?
“There are a lot of dinners, drinks and sex. Pretty much anything that you would expect people to bet on. We are seeing 52% challenges relating to sports, 40% custom and 8% predictions.”
What are your next milestones?
“To us it’s all about pumping out the Android app and hopefully that will be released mid October. We are really studying the data from our early stages and we see the demand for the video function and the seamless experience. Right now I would say we are a little bit rough around the edges but we are going to hire some people, eliminate the issues and make it a seamless experience. I am really excited about it.”
