Nigel Eccles, the founder of FanDuel and a visionary in the world of online betting, discusses the evolution of prediction markets and fantasy sports. He shares insights on how crypto elements are reshaping dating apps, while exploring the struggles and successes of platforms like Polymarket. Nigel also offers a candid take on the dynamics of betting markets, the future of memecoins, and the challenges in online speculation. His predictions for the next year in the gambling landscape are both bold and entertaining!

Nigel Eccles & Varun Sudhakar discuss bringing sports betting to crypto on Solana, Monaco protocol benefits, shared liquidity, market dynamics, revenue model, competitive fees, user-friendly interface, strategic choice of Solana for transaction speed and efficiency

Nigel Eccles is best known for being the co-founder of FanDuel, a company that pioneered the daily fantasy sports market in the US. You may have seen their high impact commercials on TV, heard of them becoming one of the few unicorn $1bil startups to come out of Europe or their eventual sale to Paddypower/Betfair for $465mil. You may have even seen him featured in the infamous John Oliver “This Week Tonight” episode covering the industry he helped to create! It’s safe to say – there are not many people on the planet that have the experience that Nigel has – after starting & selling multiple companies – he’s been around the block & back as a serial entrepreneur. At Fanduel his experience includes raising $400mil+ in venture capital, competing with their closest rival, Draft Kings who raised over $1bil+, to investing hundreds of millions of dollars in customer acquisition on channels like TV, radio & paid digital. In this revealing conversation, he opened up to share his perspective on: how to come up with business ideas in the first place raising venture capital vs bootstrapping how to accelerate paid customer acquisition & measure your marketing effectively building a high growth team the highs & lows of selling a company & lessons learned why founders & early employees might not always make a return from a sale because of preferred vs common stock creating a new market vs capturing an existing one why “going viral” isn’t a good strategy for paid products what to do if you’re a non-technical founder the process of taking an initial idea & evaluating its business potential applying the same logic to his new company, Flick, going after the podcast market Subscribe to watch the episode on YouTube here. Thank you to our sponsor who helps make this show possible -SquareFoot, where growing companies find their place, check out SquareFoot.com/creatorlab to find your next office space