Oli Slipper – PickGuru

I’m delighted to announce the launch of PickGuru, a new app that combines the best bits from fantasy gaming and sports betting.

PickGuru started life in the middle of lockdown as a simple spreadsheet based tipping competition I devised for a few friends and colleagues to appease everyone’s boredom. I categorised the 96 Masters golfers into 10 different categories: Hot Favourites, Legends of the Game, British, Europeans, Major Winners etc. The winner would be the entrant whose 10 selections had the combined lowest finishing positions.

I sent the mail out to 20 mates and thought nothing of it. Then, the day before the Masters, something interesting started to happen – my spreadsheet competition had gone viral; a minute didn’t pass without a random person transferring £50 to my bank account and before I knew it, we had a £30,000 pot as the first ball was hit. The creative juices started to flow… there was surely a business here!

At the end of the tournament we sent an email to all of the entrants announcing the winners, thanking everyone for playing and intimating the launch of an app for future events. The response from our players was incredible, with multiple offers of investment and universal agreement that an app offering live leaderboards, player statistics and mini-leagues could be a real winner.

Next step was to find a partner to build PickGuru. Whilst contemplating potential partners, I recalled a conversation I had had some months earlier with my former colleague @Paul Watkins (former Finance Director @ Perform) who along with his friend @Paul Cobley (a leading technologist from the sports betting world) had pitched a peer-to-peer betting investment opportunity to me some months earlier. After a few conversations, I convinced them that PickGuru was the way to go and they became our co-founders along with my Pitch colleagues Jon Owen and Jon Youell who helped devise the product.

A key benefit of partnering with the Paul’s was also piggy-backing their UK gambling license application which significantly cut our time to market. The final member of our founding team was @Adam Perrin, former Brand Director at Paddy Power and co-founder of Masomo, the leading mobile sport game studio.

With the team in place, we reengaged with the players of the Masters game who had expressed an interest in investing and set about raising a seed round of £2m. The objectives were to give us the firepower to build a world class app and to prove our initial thesis that we can acquire customers at a significant discount to traditional online sports betting due to our R-Rate (much higher than COVID-19!).

Demand for our fundraise was substantial and we ended up closing a £2.6m round at a pre-money valuation of £6m. Investors include: Paddy Power, Andrew Croker, Oliver and Alexander Kent-Braham, Simon Wear, Joel Morris, Ben Pullicino, Gary Linke, Guy Le Grew, Jeremy Lawson and Will Neale – a collection of some of Europe’s leading investors, entrepreneurs, bankers, broadcasters, sports executives and bookmakers.

We shared a free-to-play beta version of PickGuru for The Open with our investors and the results were extremely encouraging. On average players visited Pick Guru over 20 times per day and that number doubled for those who created mini-leagues.

We’re really excited about this opportunity and needed a world class CEO who matched our ambition. I’m delighted to say we’ve appointed Olly Roland-Jones who joins us from TikTok and brings with him extensive experience in sports, gaming and betting.

So here we are, we are almost ready for launch with a golf and football product, with more sports to follow. PickGuru will be available in the app store early next year and I’ll share more information when we’re live.