Strike: Transforming Betting into a Sophisticated Asset Class

Creating derivatives for prediction markets, starting with sports

Ronit Jain

a month ago

#gaming#trading#marketplace#sports_tech

Hey YC,

We’re Ronit, Ankit, and Aarav — cofounders of Strike, where we’re building financial derivatives for prediction markets, starting with sports betting.

The Problem ❌

Strike is a daily fantasy sports platform that lets you make continuous bets on sporting events. A continuous bet is when you make more money the more right you are.

For example, say you’re betting the over on LeBron scoring above 25 points. On current betting platforms (PrizePicks, DraftKings, etc), you would win the same whether he scored 26 points or 50 points. You would also only win a fixed payout where your bet stake is often far greater than your reward. On Strike, you would win more money for every point above 25 that LeBron scores.

This problem transcends sports betting — even on current prediction markets like Polymarket or Kalshi, there is just a fixed binary payout for event contracts, and little opportunity for people to make outsized gains on one bet.

Our Solution ✅

Strike lets you make continuous bets so you can make outsized returns for being really right. Let’s go back to that LeBron example (Over 25 points) 🐐:

To make a bet, all a user has to do is select a multiplier
- A multiplier represents the dollars per point you would win/lose per point that LeBron scores over/under 25 points
Say I selected a 10x multiplier
- If LeBron scores 35 points, I win 10 points * 10x multiplier = $100
- If LeBron scores 15 points, I lose -10 points * 10x multiplier = -$100

As a result, users now have the ability to make large returns based on their confidence on just one line. On our end, we’re still able to maintain a 3-5% edge on each bet using our proprietary model that is able to hedge and dynamically adjust the lines we offer.

The Future 📈

At Strike, we began as a sports betting platform, but to fully fulfill our vision of turning betting into a legitimate asset class, our product needs to evolve into a peer-to-peer exchange. This will allow users to trade and market make not only in sports, but also in prediction contracts across various domains. This will facilitate significantly higher trading volumes and creates an environment ripe for high-frequency and algorithmic trading.

Over the next couple of months, our focus will shift to building an exchange that offers a full suite of financial derivatives - including options, swaps, and more - for all prediction markets. This infrastructure will not only provide consumers with a sophisticated betting experience, but also attracts institutional investors to finally view betting as a legitimate asset class.

Our Ask

If you like sports and want to try out our app, send an email to ronit@strikebet.app to be added to our testflight!
If you are an institutional investor or trader - we’d love to chat! Schedule a call here: https://calendly.com/founders-strikebet/30min