What's new with props.cash

“What’s New” is a series dedicated to featuring past guests of The Betting Startups Podcast, where we check in on how things have been going since the podcast. This edition of What’s New features props.cash, which appeared on Ep. 25 of the podcast in June 2022.

Pete Smaluck just might be in the same stage of evolution as the company he founded four years ago.

Props.Cash isn’t old. But it entered the sports betting ecosystem in Canada early. And it’s been around long enough to have built a brand that withstood a raft of imitators and the rounds of mergers and acquisitions that redefined the landscape since.

Smaluck remains interested and productive and feels like he has much to accomplish in the industry, too.

But at 40 years old, he foresees a time when having further built his research and analysis site he’ll still have time to return to his first and still-flickering love: teaching elementary school math.

“I think I would like to get back into teaching once this chapter of my life is over,” Smaluck told Betting Startups. “It's always been a goal and passion of mine to teach mathematics kind of at the elementary school level. But I'm glad that I've had this detour because in a way I still am teaching math, but it's sports bettors.

“There’s multiple layers of mathematics happening here, from the finances to the programming to the whatever that I think will be of value if I ever decide to go back into teaching mathematics. It's not lost. I'm still pretty young, so this is a detour that I think will carry value over the longer course of my life if I go back into it.”

There’s plenty to do now, though, in making sure Props.Cash maintains its position as a prime educator of bettors seeking sharp intel. A key factor has been building upon its current advantages, Smaluck said.

“I think authenticity is one of them with the customer base,” he observed. “They know that you're out here innovating, versus piggybacking off other people's ideas and kind of repackaging it and selling it.

“The sports bettor is a savvy customer and they know when companies out there are innovating and getting their knowledge first.”

Props.Cash, a subscription-based service, offers odds and probability analysis on major leagues including, currently, NBA, NFL, NHL CounterStrike: GO and college basketball.

“We just continue to grow and it’s nothing magical, just listening to the customers and trying to fill in the gaps where they need help,” Smaluck said, “doing our best with respect to building software and education.”

Another plus is that securing and pleasing those patrons paying a $19.99 subscription fee was less costly when the company launched. Throughout North America, sports betting brands and ancillary contributors have been forced to heap bonuses and rewards on fickle or deal-savvy bettors.

“Customer-acquisition costs, they grow over time,” Smaluck observed. “The industry becomes more mature and we were blessed with a lower acquisition cost to start and it's going up over time, I think, across the board as any industry gets more competitive. But I think it'd be harder to bootstrap a business in this space now than it would have been maybe four years ago when we started.”

Props.Cash has nearly doubled to 10 employees including contractors and legal advisors, with Smaluck grateful for the team - including vice president of marketing Mike Sansom and lead developer Trevor Vanderee - he’s been able to assemble in his fully bootstrapped enterprise.

That group keeps fresh ideas flowing that turn into new experiences for subscribers.

“I still think there's a lot of room for innovation in the betting tooling-research space,” Smaluck said. “As users become smarter and as the total addressable market matures and users become more knowledgeable, I think there's green pasture to explore with respect to innovation. Our main concern is the way that the data is presented to the user. Each year it feels like we're coming up with a few new ideas. Some land and some don't, but there's really no shortage of new ideas. I feel like we're far from being in a space where the products are totally mature.

“We're still a relatively young space. A lot of these companies weren't around for 24 months, 36 months. So even us being around for four years, we're an older company in this space, but we're still relatively young when you think about the lifespan of a lot of companies.”

With plenty of time for what’s now and what’s next.