The Risk Takers Podcast
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The Risk Takers Podcast
Building an Institutional Sports Market Maker w/ BigBuckHunter | Ep 166
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On this episode we are joined by Henry Kerins - CEO of Manhattan Athletic Group and one of the earliest employees at NoVig. MAG spun off of NoVig as an internal trading team and now trades almost every sports market across multiple venues. This is a must listen for those building their own trading operations in the space!
0:00 Intro
50:15 Listener Q&A
Welcome to The Risk Takers Podcast, hosted by professional sports bettor John Shilling (GoldenPants13) and SportsProjections. This podcast is the best betting education available - PERIOD. And it's free - please share and subscribe if you like it.
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Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I am like an AI maximalist, so I almost never say like, well, AI can't do X, Y, and Z. Um, but currently, in the year of our Lord 2026, one of one of the points at which you would start running into the limits of your AI generated software systems is if you kind of if you let an LLM build a really good integration with a single PM for you, that was all about doing, you know, one specific kind of trading, and then you start expanding to other venues and other product categories and trying to mix like top-down with bottom-up and and order flow with this and that and fast feed strategies and all that. Like that's where you get to system bloat that your inability to understand software architecture from the beginning is now really tindering you.
SPEAKER_00All right, what's up, everybody? GPS V and a returning, you're actually a two-time guest, kind of to the pod. This is your first go on the new version. Some would say the much better version, but you were uh we we talked before a while ago, and I thought you had one of the better podcasts, uh, Big Buck Hunter. Welcome back to the show.
SPEAKER_04Pleasure to be here. Definitely a different setup and a different stage of both of our lives right now. So good to come back and talk.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It kind of feels like stuff's more settled and less settled. Um, you know, like keep going. Yeah, you know, so had some success in the industry. Novig's booming. But uh yeah, I mean, I think the first uh the first question is maybe just a little bit of background on you. Um and you know, for those who didn't see that episode who don't follow you on Twitter, like how did you get to where you are uh as kind of head of uh everything at Novig besides Jacob?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I can give my title.
SPEAKER_04So we actually start with the business. Let's start with the business, yeah. Let's work backwards from where we are now. Um so I'm actually the CEO of a company called Manhattan Athletic Group, which we call Mag for short, um, which we probably need to go update our LinkedIn's and whatnot. Um I was at Novig. I ran trading there, like the technology and um operations side, brought in my good friend Chris to kind of handle day-to-day operations so I could be a little more on technology. And then as part of the rules around regulated prediction markets, you can't have internal trading operations at exchanges. Um Noveg created two uh subsidiaries. One is a company that just owns the exchange business, and one is Mag, which owns the trading business, and we're firewalled. So I'm currently the CEO of a proprietary prediction market uh sports trading company. That's that's my job. Um how did I get there? You know, I would say ultimately it was like my special interest hobby was this hypothetical world where they were American-facing legal sports exchanges where you could trade whatever you want. And I started building technology to do that before it was actually true. Um, kind of thinking, wouldn't it be great if this was real? Um it it's it's hard to overstate just how delusional it was. It's not all that far away from like a dungeon master for a uh DD game, like inventing far too complex an economy for his game. You know, it's just like when I when I talked to you three years ago, there just was nowhere to actually do these transactions. And so it was ludicrous to be putting all this effort into doing it this way. Um but I I did think at the time that it was kind of crazy that you know, FanDuel and DraftKings were the big market leaders in sports betting, that they didn't take their approach to trading and market making very seriously. The the number one arrow in their quiver was banning customers, um, which regardless of whether or not you think that's right or wrong, it it just didn't seem very forward-thinking to assume that you'd you'd always be able to do that and be the dominant player in the space by doing that. And so I kind of thought, you know, if I figure out how to do this, certainly it's gotta be worth something to someone. Um and so I I joined Novig uh pitching Jacob and Kletchy on the idea of doing that. Um I I wrote them a letter, it's pinned on my um Twitter. Like literally the exact pitch, the first thing I ever said to any of them. And had a meeting with them and explained what I thought I could do, and they brought me in to build it. And then we just ran really good. Like both the company did very well and managed to onboard a lot of customers and a lot of liquidity and in all the different forms that you want to see it. Um, but then also the industry and the regulatory side, everything kind of broke the way of PMs over the last 12 to 18 months in a big way. Um, that has just uncapped the opportunity for guys like me to do what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02So I'm here now. One of the questions I wanted to ask, I went back and watched uh watched the last time you talked with uh on on the show, and I wasn't on the show. One of the things you mentioned is is um you originally, when you were making that switch to sort of more traditional industry to this industry, you had reached out to to venture capital like funds to try and like get the lay of the land or have like to see where where is most interesting. Like I wanted to dive into that and understand how did you get people to respond to that? Like I would have thought that would be like a hard avenue to even get get like the time of day. What did that what did that look like?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I'm gonna sound bad because I don't really respond to LinkedIn's messages very much, but you can get a lot of these guys to respond to your LinkedIn. And the message matters, but and this sounds like a LinkedIn post, but it really matters what you write to people, um, whether or not you're selling them on the idea that they should uh respond to your message. Uh, but I would also confess that the fund that led Novig's seed round is a fund called Lux Capital, which is a very well-regarded New York-based um seed series based age fund that I was aware of. Um and my real estate agent told me he had a client who worked there. And uh realtors are great. They try to help you with everything because ultimately they get paid a lot of money to not do a lot. So they try to find um secondary value to provide you. And I said, Can you just send an email intro between me and whoever I don't even remember the guy's name? And he sent this intro. And I said, actually, who I'm trying to get in contact with is the leadership team at Novig. And the guy from Lux was kind of confused, like, what do I have to do with this? But okay, like this is no longer a problem of mine if I just send one more email. And so then by the time it hits Jacob, it's like, oh, we have this, you know, fiery hot referral from one of our top VCs to talk to this guy. The guy's never met me before. So that wasn't how I did it every time, but I think, but literally, that just lays bare how overpowered this strategy is.
SPEAKER_00So you kind of like beard it, you beard it into Nova.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, big time. I mean, this also works way better if you want to like working in a seed stage company is kind of an insane thing to do. Um like you couldn't reach out to, you know, like Marty Andreeson and be like, hey, I need an intro into anthropic and just expect them to respond. That's not gonna happen. Um, but it works for really small companies.
SPEAKER_00I love it. Um well I think I think let's go with when you first join Novig, because I think if you haven't watched the video of Henry's old interview, there's very few ones where like the video matters. That one, it kind of does matter because you were pretty open with drawing us some behind the scenes stuff. Talk about like building um when you got to Novig, like building the system, like a basically a sports exchange, also a sports book, like all of this from the ground up as somebody who came from your previous job was Bloomberg, right? Before you got here. So you're kind of coming in and you're like, Well, I have this idea, but now actually I have to build it and it has to work. Like, what was that like?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think we were at GPT 3, which is important, like keeping track of oh yeah, true. I mean, like, you can't tell these stories without noting exactly where you were on the exponential takeoff curve. Um, because it would be a very different story today. Um Kalechi, I talked to him a lot about what I wanted to do. And he's a very good software architect, and he's not a sports better, and so he would challenge everything I said, and then if he finally accepted it, he would come up with much better designs for it than I had. Um and then we it was a lot of whiteboarding, a lot of just like doing math and making sure we weren't missing things and weren't double counting things. Um, and then I think the the back end, I don't want to get too technical. The back end of it was not that hard to like come up with everything I wanted to account for. But then the the real question was like, how do you build this in such a way that traders can see every single thing that's going on and control all of it? And and what's every decision a human being could ever make, and and why would they make it? And how do you make it like a really low friction path to making that decision that doesn't break anything else? And even like constantly, that's that's always the problem today, right? Like it's so easy to highlight, like, oh, we don't want to do this, we shouldn't be selling this at this price, blah, blah, blah. But to to get every single person involved from training to engineering to understand why that happened and and how many great features went into that one mistake being made and how you don't want to disrupt it. And you also don't want to put in some like brute force switch, like, don't let this happen. Because like, well, the next guy is going to be confused. He's gonna say, I see all these numbers in a row, they should do this, but it's not, you know, it can be very, very hard to make a system that is sufficiently sophisticated to win, but also sufficiently simple to understand. Um, so that I think like constant internal and external negotiations about what are we actually going to do? How do we keep reducing the level of complexity here? Um that a big long iterative process of doing that was the uh I think the simplest way to describe what it continues to be. Especially now, like I think things keep um adding dimensions to themselves. Like we we trade on multiple venues and we do parlays through the same mention that we do traits, um, and we do virtually every market. Like, I I don't think there's a market maker out there who covers more markets than we do, um besides like you know, drafting trading or something, somebody who has a band button. And to actually have all of these, you know, tens of thousands of markets across multiple venues and configurations like communicating their activity with one another is really complicated. And that's kind of the big challenge that we run into.
SPEAKER_02We had a question. We will definitely get into that. I'm curious, like the transition from internal to X like external and that that growth. Um, but maybe one more question on like you moving to Novig and maybe something that was not obvious at the time, maybe it's obvious now to you. But when joining there, I think you had said at the last interview you had thought you had basically pitched to the founders that market making is going to be really important and you thought you could help. That's you know, different exchanges have gone different routes on on that, like whether they've they've invested in that or not. Why did you think that was important and what's what sort of gave you the confidence that that you could do it? I know in the first interview you talked about like your sports betting, and obviously you came like professionally from uh that background too, but it's it's a pretty big leap. And I'm curious like why you thought it was important and why you why you thought you were the right person to solve that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, you you own customer experience, which was really big. Um, it's a nightmare to like build a bunch of a product and then say now we have to find a market maker who's willing to quote it. And the and the product doesn't exist unless they agree to. So they can ask for mega rebates or whatever, and we just have to say yes because we have no plan B. Um and and so that makes your development cycles really slow and makes your like product release not great. Um and it's really expensive. And you know, Calci and Polymarket have kind of outrun cost by raising at insane valuations. I mean, I say it's at very high valuations. I I try not to have like um don't cap opinions. I'm I'm top, I'm top down on the pricing. If that's what they raise though, that's what they're worth. Like you can't you can't fire into the market. Um there's some trades I would make if these were public companies. So the yeah, like the it costs both of them or other exchanges insane amounts of money to pay for market making services. And even then, you don't really get everything you want. Um, like nobody really has full prop coverage to type spreads anywhere except for us, right? Like there's a lot of a lot of these things that are just part of deliver. Um, and they've had to sell like meaningful pieces of equity to market makers to achieve a lot of these goals. Um so that's a big thing, is like you can deliver something to customers that that you otherwise could not do. Um additionally, it is a it's a revenue stream if you do it right. And revenue is important, certainly long term, but in the short term, because you can make the numbers work on on reducing fees and and margins and all these things. Um so even if you're like not hyper focused on revenue because you're a high growth business, you you need to be able to paint some kind of picture of how this thing could go. Um, but then so a big one though that I think I think basically everybody has missed this, and this is why no other US facing exchange has been able to build a really good internal team is you need talent to do internal trading. You can't get second rate people and put anything good together. And the talent want money and they want to win. And the numbers don't work if you're like, well, this is like winning is secondary to customer experience. It just doesn't add up. You you need to actually say to somebody, like, you can come in and crush and crush for size, and you get a piece of this, and you you know, you have a salary and whatnot, and it all adds up, and it can it is meaningfully competitive with what you can do trading on your own if you want to attract anybody who's good because there's so much if if you can win on peons, you can make a ton of money right now.
SPEAKER_00You're allowed to swear, yeah. Sorry.
SPEAKER_04Well, I don't want to I don't want to start this early.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but uh it's like recording this early, no swearing before uh noon, right?
SPEAKER_04Trench would always like hold it together for about 30 minutes in his pod, and then once the dam broke, every other word was an F bomb. And talking about the most mundane topics, but somehow it all made him infuriated, and I'm the same way. So yeah, like if you actually want to have the the best people, you you need to be built to truly win and compete at the highest level. Or you have nothing. You'll have mass attrition as people go search for that other opportunity. Um, so there's no there's no strategy of being pretty good. You're either absolutely nothing or you're the best.
SPEAKER_00It's so so uh, you know, recently like we we're about finishing up on uh you know our first kind of public round of hiring, small round. I know you guys hired seven new traders from listening to your last episode, but we're we're kind of finishing up here and like that's so true. Like you have to, you have to be like, hey, like this is worth your time. It's so hard to hire in the space right now because everybody good can make a million dollars buying software, basically. And it's just like you have to somehow be like, hey, like this is more worth it for you. So I've had people be like, hey, we're looking for like a job like this. And I'm like, I don't think I can recommend anybody because everybody who I would recommend wouldn't do the job because they wouldn't want to not create it on your exchange or do all this. So like hiring right now, like obviously it's frothy, but like it is really, really hard, I think.
SPEAKER_04And if you think about the adverse selection effect of oh, I go to the street to hire and I get referred 10 good people and nine turn me down because of money, and then I get one. It's like, oh, what are the odds that I got the fraud of the bunch? You know, like there's some of that that can happen. Um that yeah. And and I do think you need also people to not just be convinced, but be 100% bought in. They have to really truly believe this is gonna work because your delivery in this job is so dependent on your level of buy-in. Like you just have to be working 24-7. You have to be up. Like, who is up at midnight this week watching extra innings of that game where there was a ground rule double. That's really a ground rule single. That's a quarter million dollars if you guys are out there to to get it. You know what I mean? Like that that's literally the job is stuff like that. So it really, really matters that people are invested.
SPEAKER_02So John had mentioned you you recently hired seven new people, I think. You met you on your your podcast. Um, maybe more broadly, like talk, talk through how your team, I know you got into it a little bit, but like how your team and the goals of your team has changed like since you know, three years ago when you did that, Pod, to what what you're doing now, maybe size, just like I said, general goals. Like at that point, uh, I'm guessing it was mostly about keeping liquidity up on your own exchange. And like you said, you've you've branched out. So maybe talk a little bit more about that, you know, the split and and your goals these days.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I think we've always been really bad at in play because we've just like let all of our systems and and models just kind of run loose, and then we run them at pretty low limits because we don't have like the coverage with people watching these clients all day long. Um so we've just always kind of like fought scared, and I think it's a big problem with I think it's the thing we've least supported on the product and the biggest shortcoming for me. And the fastest path in my eyes towards having that kind of like six-figure liquidity on both sides of major markets for us, um, is to have human beings on the screen. So I feel like I have that insurance policy in place. So that was that kind of led us to what if we just went with a really big number? Um and and hired, you know, some some more junior guys, some less experienced guys, um, kind of a mix of, you know, some technical talent, but not a lot of sports training experience, or a lot of sports training experience, but kind of not the resume and technical talent where it's easy to get a job. And and we personally know internally that, or we think we're very good at talent development. So we're gonna be able to get everybody who comes in doing a lot of different things really, really well. Um, so there we talk about it being like there's a nine to five element and a five to nine, right? There's trading nights and weekends, but then there's also, you know, dipping your toe in modeling or um writing software or all these other things that are gonna, you know, we want you to come out of working here or want you to stay here. And we also want you to feel like you're developing a lot of skills for your career. Um, but yeah, a big thing is just. Knowing that we could actually run at huge size or run really serious coverage and that we have people who are tracking every single detail of everything that happens so that we don't get absolutely buried.
SPEAKER_00As far as goals go, like do you see this as I'm trying to think. Do you do you so like if you think about like some of the best biggest quant shops now, like they started as specializing in one niche thing, doing it really well, and then kind of expanding past that? Like, do you have broader goals? Or does I guess having the same parent as Novig kind of always make your goals like partially support the exchange? Like, or are you looking at this like we want to be the firm that makes the most money trading sports in the entire world?
SPEAKER_04Like is yeah. So it's I think like money is the scoreboard. Um so part of it is even just you know, not to get too deep into it, but like people who work first have equity in Novig, for instance, right? Like you've already got some cop bias towards supporting the platform. Um, and then you I think you do want to make sure that you have either commercial agreements in place or structures like that that kind of point incentives the right where the right way, or it could even be like, you know, the the way we we think about um how we structure the e-valves of traders or whatnot to be kind of oriented around this venue. Because ultimately, like we do kind of own activity on Novig and own the customer there more so than other places. So there are a lot of ways in which like a huge influx of of traffic there would be really good for us. Um so we try to balance, right? Like it can't just be all on vibes, like like there's actually no reason to do this under the hood. Like there has to be good reason, but also that's part of the buy-in thing, right? It's like, look, we only even have this opportunity because Novig has given us this opportunity. So we have to like deliver on all this stuff big time for them. Um and and everybody's gonna do that, and we'll figure out the rest later because that's just what this company does. Like, so so I we do constantly feel like from a hundred different directions, it's like all these things need to sort of happen just in time and all have to come together. Um yeah. Sorry, what was the question?
SPEAKER_00I guess my question is like, what like is there that ambition to be, I guess off venue, like on non-Novic venues, like like yeah, like we see jump, we see SIG, and we think like we're gonna be bigger than that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Right. So I think I think if you have the best infrastructure, you become the pipes through which all kinds of things can happen, right? Like, like talking about hiring, like if you want to hire the best talent, and if you already have the best distribution and the best systems, right? And it's like, okay, you can take your what you know, your golf plays anywhere, we're gonna get you the most down on them. We're gonna be able to do the most with it. We're the most attractive destination for you as some golf originator, right? Um, and so I I think you know, going back to what I was saying before, you you have to dominate everywhere to get any kind of success and be able to attract talent and be able to move and operate. So I think even insofar as our goal is ultimately to support Novig and and make that happen, we have to be the best at everything we do in order to achieve that. Um, and that's just the state we're in right now. And this stuff changes every six months. So I I often say it worked like your headlights can only see 200 feet in front of you, but you can make it the whole way home, right? Like we we can only observe so much about how things currently work. And it's okay, we have to absolutely deliver on this. We know all these other things that are coming down the pipeline on the Novic side that are going to be really good for all of us. And if we're we're ready for what we think is gonna happen, um we'll be super rewarded for the fact that we led with this as our number one venue, number one priority. So that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02How do you think of that, like building that that sort of distribution channel that that will naturally attract the best talent as sort of like a long-term moat? Like, because I, you know, I I sort of these days it's and you we'll probably get into some AI stuff. I know you love to talk about that stuff, but like these days it's easier than ever. I know we've talked about on this podcast how like before, like just being able to hook up to the API would have been like a huge edge, and that's obviously much easier, easier for people. So, how do you think about like that sort of strategy as a long-term, you know, mode?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I am like an AI maximalist, so I almost never say like, well, AI can't do X, Y, and Z. Um, but currently in the year of our Lord 2026, one of one of the points at which you would start running into the limits of your AI generated software systems is if you kind of if you let an LLM build a really good integration with a single PM for you that was all about doing one specific kind of trading, and then you start expanding to other venues and other product categories and and trying to mix like top-down with bottom-up and and order flow with this and that, and and fast feed strategies and all that. Like that's where you get to system bloat that your inability to understand software architecture from the beginning is now really hindering you. Um, of course, like we're probably one generation of frontier models away from that being a solved problem as well. Um but we know how to do that now. So building that now does feel like a technological edge and boat, um, which we then can also bit by bit bring origination modeling, uh original pricing data into. It doesn't have to cover everything, but if you have just doing specific categories, those are individual modes. Um, and then in terms of just partnerships and hiring, right? Like having that now lets you get, you know, a lot of a lot of new and novel data into your systems that becomes additional moat. And then we think of the venues as being customers in addition to the customers themselves, and that we have a we're almost like service providers, right? It's you want your app to look this way when customers log in, you want this experience to be there. We could we make sure that experience is there, right? We we have a different mindset than somebody who is just trying to trade for the most money at all times. Um and if if there's a world where the PMs kind of coalesce around a smaller collection of very large MMs who kind of solve all these core problems for them and they more begrudgingly accept some other MMs or kind of try to wall off certain parts of the system where like toxicity really doesn't help the ecosystem at all. We think we're well positioned to be part of that small club, right? So just for instance, like like if we land in some kind of world where, you know, if everywhere there's no delay, fast feeding and court siding is super profitable and there's kind of nothing you can do about it, your relationship with uh a venue is gonna depend a lot on whether or not you need to do that to win, right? Like if that's a key part of you winning, they you have no bargaining power. They really don't like you being there. They might have to accept you because of the CFTC, but that's a much different position to be in than being the person who supports customers in spite of all that, right? So I think that those kinds of things are motes. And they um the the not all the fruits of those trees have fully borne out yet. But you can't, I think even, you know, if we were if we were a year ahead of where we are now, um, if we had been, you know, SIG or jump or whoever um operating with huge bank roles and built for zero latency regimes, we'd be owning large pieces of you know polymarket and or calci by virtue of liquidity deals, right? Like that's that's how those deals got done in the past. And and I think the way they get priced and valued in the future will be different. And they I think the venues have much more refined ideas about what the highest quality market maker really is. I think maybe they they don't know a lot about sports, right? Couch team and polymarket people are not sports people in some in some instances openly antagonistic towards sports. So I I think the the first pass of identifying preferred partners for them was not really all that accurate. Um you talk about like again, that's possible edges for Novig or how Novig could like come out from behind. Like, I think those companies kind of see sports as something that eventually ends up in their rear view year, right? Whereas if we continue to collaborate, their number one partner being a parent co that like really believes in this product and vision, you could see how you could accelerate past um certainly like what polymarket is doing in volume. I don't I don't think it would be crazy if we were beating polymarket in daily notional sports volume by the end of this year. I think that's a very realistic goal. Twenty trajectories.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I mean, they're kind of flatlined and it's all split across two venues. Like, I don't think that's unheard of. And then if it's like, yeah. And then if it's you and Talcy and you can call Tarek and say, hey, Tarek, what do you think about American professional sports? Like, he doesn't really care for it. You know what I mean? All of a sudden you're in a great spot.
SPEAKER_00So well, SP and I, that was one of our takes, is like by the end of football season, like we're gonna see some we're gonna see some surprises in the uh like volume rankings. But I have to, I want to ask you, I want to ask you a question on the what you said about like being a market maker. This is something like obviously we're smaller, but we're we're like a smaller, more niche version of of what you guys do. It's like we're, you know, not on as many venues probably, but and we don't probably and we definitely don't do as many markets, but you know, we're in the same boat of like you have to think of the exchange as your customer. They want things sometimes. You do things that you don't think are profitable just because you know it's gonna help them out and like you want to keep a good relationship. But like when you're saying like, okay, there's gonna be what it sounds like is like a contraction of market makers, like talk about it from maybe a smaller two, maybe two examples. Like one, maybe like my operation, call it like six, six, seven people. We're doing not everything, but do a few markets really well and then kind of bop around and make money where we can. And then like maybe like the RFQ, what single person like RFQ Max or something, you know, who's just kind of getting in front of Robinhood Flow. Like, what do you see the future being like for a couple of those different, like more garage bandy type market makers?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so we haven't seen for sure, but I kind of suspect um that some of the newer entrants are going to say Calcium Polymarket are doing so well in the open ecosystem free-for-all approach. What if we took a much more UI UX customer-centric, like an even more like recreational customer-centric approach, right? Like almost kind of rebuild the DraftKings fanatics philosophy for a PM ecosystem. And in that world, you would want more restrictions over what somebody can openly do with your API versus what a designated market maker can do, um, because it gives you a lot more control over that user experience. And and so I I don't know that they're doing that, but I would suspect, and I I if I was running some of these companies that are trying to catch up from behind on the PF side, that's probably how I would build the product, just because it feels like there's a lane there, and you have the history of of OSBs succeeding with that kind of design. Right. So like offering odds boosts daily that are paid for by the venue, right? Like you can do that. You can like just say, hey, we're gonna we're gonna pay you to make a four-legg combo. You can't force the quota to offer the boost, but you can add it on top. You but you can only do that if you can pull the money together from somewhere. And it's a lot easier to pull the money together from somewhere when you have a restricted list of of DMMs, and and you could be pseudo-collaborative, you know. Um so I I bet some companies try that. And it's not clear whether or not that it's really doable given all the regulations. Um, and it's not clear whether or not it'll be a winning strategy with customers. But as an MM, I think it's it's worth the time and money to invest in in being a premier partner for a DCM that wants to go that route. It's not realistic for a garage band MM. And so if you're a garage band MM, you you probably don't want to see that be the end state of the way the industry works, right? A kind of um OSB 2.0. Um And then if you talk to anybody with a European accent who's lived through the history of Betfair, they'll say it doesn't matter what how you think this is different, how you think it goes. Eventually you can't have the MMs making so much more money than the exchange itself on fees. The the exchange itself will will come from more and more of a piece of the pie from the MMs and just kind of gobble up all the edge. And uh if they're right, that will also drain the garage band MMs. Um but I can't explain exactly what the path would be there other than big, big successful businesses decide that this is their money and are able to take it from you somehow.
SPEAKER_02Well, I wanted to ask a question on that, so I'm glad you you brought it up. Like that in my head, sort of the the the path it would take in that scenario is is basically every every exchange eventually wants to they look at their their their market makers and how much money they're making and they say, we can do this, and and they slowly close off the ecosystem. Like you said, I think you know, some of the, you know, the the current players like underdog or whatever, like it's it's not like anybody can just like go and be on any side of the trade, like like some of the Calcies or Novigs or whatever. Um you do you it sounds like that's sort of an open question to you, but like to me, that seems like a pretty natural progression of if if I'm a business trying to make as much money as possible, that seems like the direction it would naturally follow. Do you it sound like do you agree with that? Do you what what would be your sort of pushback to that?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think like look, I I can't speak for any of these companies. I don't want to, I don't want to say underdogs doing that, right? Because if if they don't get it's your time to get on, like, you know, no, but but also like but nobody's nobody's nobody has really clearly done it yet in a way that I could like point and wag a finger at them. Um but I if I if I was a betting man, I'd say you'd see at least one venue lean heavily into that strategy, and I I could see why it would work. I mean ultimately it's kind of like you have to you have to build the product on top of it that makes it worth your while to have done that, right? So if you if you kind of lose on price discovery and whatnot, but you really can deliver like promos and customer experience that are really attractive to customers and you can sell that story, then it'll be worth it. And I think a few companies will take a swing at doing that.
SPEAKER_02But just to just to clarify what I'm saying, like I wasn't trying to take a dig at any company, but like just presently on underdog or some of these other exchanges, like DraftKings Predict or whatever. And I know it's early for a lot of these companies, like you can't go in and and operate on like the way you can on other exchanges. I think some of those exchanges are working on it, but like that that sort of closed off is sort of what I was I was alluding to.
SPEAKER_04Sure. Yeah, they all some of them have UIs that don't allow for make orders at all. Um I think they all have open APIs to some extent, but it you gotta go do your own research about what it what it takes to be trading in all these venues.
SPEAKER_00All right. I have uh kind of uh, you know, rank these in importance of of value to a sports MM right now. Okay. Okay. Pricing. So whatever we want to call this, data science modeling, coming up with your own price. Um trading team, um market making, market making, let's just call it like an automated market making system, uh number of venues, and I guess paired with lowest cost of trading. What what's the most how did you see these? How would you rank them in terms of importance to the operation?
SPEAKER_04All right, so we've got pricing, trading, mm infra, like software infra. Yeah. And then number of venues. And pricing, do you just mean like bottom up or do you include like pricing off low?
SPEAKER_00That goes with trading.
SPEAKER_04That goes with trading or with mm infra?
SPEAKER_00Mm infra.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. I the the pricing is like part of it is like where do you see the like do you a lot of people who listen to this come from sports banking backgrounds who like original, right? So like I think that's a big question in people's minds. Like, how much is actually originating matter now? But like uh broadly, I still want to know your thoughts on the others.
SPEAKER_04So I I think the number one thing you need is response to an order flow. Your edges are always gonna be small when you're realizing edges, you're never gonna realize more than a few percentage points. Your losses are uncapped and you only incur losses by being traded against. So, so the number one thing you have to do, because it it restrains the um bottomless pit of losses you could possibly run into, it is how you respond to order flow that either hits your orders or does not, but like definitely number one is that that crosses with you. Um to keep going back to the uh the ground rule double thing, right? I think I think an account or two got basically drained by selling unlimited um plus one and a half, yeah, yeah, yeah, at 99%. So like that's that's the kind of thing you can get wrong, but if you just have the correct risk parameters, it barely costs you any money. And and it dominates everything else you've ever done. You can do that via human traders or via technological infrastructure, and people have success with both. Um I mean, I I'm biased still towards having technological infrastructure, number one, and then trading number two. Um pricing is is in some regards like a vanity product to have. Um and I think I think we're just current current ecosystem, it is not like when if margins get driven to a few bips everywhere and everything, then it's really important because it's the only edge you can have. It's not the current case. So to me, pricing is number four, which brings cost of trading down, right? Because just the reality, like if you talk about um uh what do you call it? World Cup. World Cup late stage matches, where there is unspeakable inflow on a single side of these markets, right? And it's just devouring all market maker liquidity available on the other side, right? That the very obvious edge and just literally being able to sell in that venue and selling at a very um high cost because demand is outpacing supply is a very, very big edge that you can get a ton of quantity down on with basically zero doubt about whether or not your edge is real. And as long as that is the current equilibrium, it dominates like. The ROI on personal pricing. However, long term, as those margins get driven down, pricing gets really important. What really ends up happening, in my opinion, is you know, everything, everything is like tends towards entropy, but then outside things shock the ecosystem, right? So like OSB was already on an entropy journey where I think a few years ago, if you went to Bet Batch, everybody's kind of depressed because it's like we're all trying to farm accounts, nobody has accounts anymore, they all get cut off, right? Like it's kind of over. And then PM's disrupted the whole thing. So we'll there'll probably be a point where people start getting depressed, but there'll be some new um new meta that disrupts everything. And if you show up to that new meta with original pricing day one, you have a lot more maneuverability and you can do a lot of things, and then you also remain resilient. Um, but in the current meta, the other factors dominate just in terms of where the money comes from. It it would be more sexy if that wasn't true, and it'd be fun to say that's not true. But I'm sure if I just like went and pulled like our total returns, right, and added up like where these primarily originated from like OG bottom-up pricing versus whereas this just kind of like net trading flow, I think net trading flow is going to be a very big percentage.
SPEAKER_02I I had a question on on sort of that long-term state with with like the the pricing being increasingly important. And it sounds like you you do think that. How do you think then like about like long-term investing in that in your team or or your you know group? Like balancing sort of like the like you said, the short term where the money is at is not necessary there, but long term it might have increasing importance.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, this is also my my off um referred to Gus Fring versus Walter White metaphor, right? Like the the pricing thing is the one thing that I'm just really not that good at doing on my own. And I I try to build all the um the systems around it to empower other guys to do it. My experience has been that to originate markets and come up with very good pricing that actually wins, you need to have a passion for it and you need to be willing to really dive down a rabbit hole and engage with something that might take a long time or really be difficult and maybe adds up to nothing. But if you do it over and over again, you find something like it's a much more kind of um magical, nonlinear process to get to models and workflows that actually wouldn't work. And can then even once you have them, right? It's like, well, we'll have models. And it's like, okay, you collaborate with trading now, and you can spend months with trading, like really figuring out if you have something. And is it good at this time of day? And is it good if we've already filled 100K on it? And is it good if this right? Like, there's still so many open questions before you really start ripping it. Um, so to me, it's it works best if you have a lot of patience for it. I can't say, you know, we need to be doing all of our own tennis numbers and winning by the Australian Open and expect to get something that I actually want to own, right? Like that doesn't work. You need to find somebody who's obsessed with tennis. And they have to come to you and say, like, I think I can beat CSGO. And you say, okay, when you have some free time, you work on beating CSGO. And it kind of unfolds until one day it you've got your, you know, your traders and your model and everybody be like, dude, we're ready to rip on the CSGO thing. We think it's really good. You say, okay, fine, go for it. But it's it's been like background kind of simmering thing. I mean, I mean, to me, that's that's how it is in an org. Um, because you have to kind of replicate what it would be like for an individual to build this thing on their own time and that kind of um almost creative artistic side of it, where it's really this personal project, uh, which is not easy to um support and can feel like it can feel like, you know, just a thing that's not turning into anything until then it's something, and then you're like, all right, great, I'm really glad that we let this happen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, that that is a good point about like originating within an org. It's it's no different than everybody else's workflow. And you you and Henry on your last podcast said something pretty interesting about the CSGO example. I think or sorry, you and Chris. But I think it was you who were like, if we brought the CSGO guy in, would we even want to give them that as like their first project? Because they could just end up like being known as the CSGO guy. And then if it loses, it's just like, what a terrible way to start your time at the firm.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. It was a human resource issue, totally. And I like the and you I'm sure you found this, right? Running a team of seven people where now a lot of your most important decisions are talent management and leadership decisions more than any trade, right? You know, how do I how do I set all these people up for success? How do I keep the vibes good? How do I put us in a position where if we all have to do something that sucks for a while, nobody wants to bail, everybody's in on it. You know what I mean? Um, and so yeah, I've I've talked to we hire people all the time who, you know, have an edge in this or that. And I explain like, look, it's not that I don't believe you, although I I 40% don't believe you, but you know, some to some level I don't believe you. Um, but even the part of me that does believe you, for the sake of your career, I don't want to put a target on your back right now. So how do we do this in a way where that doesn't happen? Like, for instance, can you can you limit the subset of stuff you play to smaller markets early in the life cycle where you think you get disproportionate CLP?
SPEAKER_00All right. A little uh, you know, uh, we got we got a mover and a shaker on the podcast, you know. He had had to dip out, you know. I think it was the president or somebody in the organization. I'm not sure. But now we're gonna go to the uh QA and we're gonna we're gonna try and rip through these, but we have we have some different themes here. And the first is gonna be general Novig questions, and then we'll have trading and market making questions. So feel free to give short answers or past or whatever you want on anything here. But let's start with Kendrick or Kendrick James. How does Novig plan on gaining and maintaining recreational flow on the platform? Will we see similar deposit bonuses for new users? Widespread, I don't know, UGC and creator-led content.
SPEAKER_04User-generated content.
SPEAKER_00Ah, okay. And VIP programs to attract ideal customers.
SPEAKER_03Um so a lot of that I'm not part of anymore.
SPEAKER_04Right, right. I know they are they are searching for what is and isn't permissible under um CFDC regulation. I believe things like deposit matches and and boosts and whatnot are doable if they're done right and they're gonna try and solve some of those issues. Um we're definitely gonna spend way, way more on marketing. I think you're gonna start seeing Novig ads in a big way going into football season, which will be really cool. Um and then, you know, getting back to, I think we're gonna be 48 states is huge, but it's it's all these things coming together at once. The a wider release, major spending, and you know, I we've always in comparison to a DraftKings or fan duel, it's a kind of high information product. But I think if you stack up what our product looks like against CalShi or Polymarket, it's a lot more similar to a sports book, the parlay experience, especially. Um, so I think those things are gonna matter. Just it's a question of whether or not we really succeed in getting eyeballs on it and if all the marketing stuff works. And I'm praying it does.
SPEAKER_02Next one from Can of Corn. What's the logic behind keeping Novig 21 plus when other competitors are, you know, Calci are 18 plus?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I wouldn't be shocked if it goes to 18. Um we I I I think initially, even just knowing that because OSPU is 21 plus, you might invite some additional scrutiny um if you went to 18. We've always stuck at 21 and felt like you know, we don't have a huge problem being there. It's not going to kill our customer acquisition pipeline. But don't be surprised if it changes.
SPEAKER_00Okay. What magic school bus? Uh what's what features, restrictions, offers you wish you could implement but can't because of regulation or just keeping pace with competition?
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah. Um I mean uh one thing that comes up, everybody talks about creator IDs on RFQs, right? Which it it will drive me crazy if Calci has them kind of grandfathered in and never gets rid of them, and no new entrance can do them. Um, an ecosystem with them or without them are both fundamentally fair in their own way, but it's not fair if one place has them and one place doesn't. And so that that will really annoy me. I kind of is that possible?
SPEAKER_00Is that like what's going on, basically?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So when you when you get a DCM license, you put together an application to the CFPC and you say, I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to do this. And they'll push back on a lot of stuff and they'll say, This is anti-competitive. We don't, we're not gonna improve this, right? And you can decide, am I gonna go to war on this? Am I gonna tell my lawyer back and be like, no, it needs to be this for this way, or do you take the note and change it, right? And so there's a there's a long iterative process. This is um how like matching delay works, right? Like live trading, speed bumps, um, where those creator date IDs exist, all the like fine details for the mechanisms of RFUs. And you can sometimes be surprised by what does and doesn't matter to them because they are coming from traditional finance, and and a lot of these arguments and decisions have been made before with kind of different underlying principles than you might have thought about if you come from sports. So I don't know exactly what mechanisms were approved for. We do we do not have creator IDs on RFQs where instantly you could, before any quote is gone back, identify who this came from and ban them if you want to. Um and Kalsky currently does have that. And it's it is easier to keep doing it when it was already approved, even if the CFTC doesn't currently like it, then you certainly can't just not get approval for it and then go and do it anyway. That's like a big problem, right? Um so you know, I wouldn't say like, oh, I I really need it to be that way. We we need to have that. Everybody needs to have that necessarily, but it's not a great situation if only one place has it. Because it just it allows for so much more generosity on pricing on just that venue and pushes sharp takers everywhere else, and it creates an asymmetry that's just really hard for the industry to support.
SPEAKER_02That makes sense. I had I had no idea. Um the next two I'll combine are sort of AI questions. We we answered Daniel's about uh competitive and advantages for Novig, but he asked, what's the max you'd be willing to spend on Claude Code codecs per month if there's only one AI option? And then from make sense, say you lose access to all your AI subscriptions tomorrow. What aspects of your work would you consider impossible? How would it affect Novig? How much would you pay to get it back? So I guess this is your your soapbox to talk about anything AI, AI related you want.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, these are really good questions because they sound like crazy hypotheticals, but they also might be super real, right? The cost of these products could go up a lot. Um or cost of inference might go down so much that it doesn't matter. So I think about it a lot, and it's it's also just a kind of fun uh mental thing. Um currently, almost every aspect of our business I understand. Um just the nature of it, right? I run a business that only does things that I get. So it would be conceivable for me to set up like some N-boss AI situation where I have constant running agents 24-7 doing all these different things, trying to cover everything. I don't think that's a healthy way for me to live or for a business to operate. And it makes a lot more sense to have a big team, have different perspectives, different people working on different things, have lots of humans in the loop. Um but if all of a sudden the cost of inference got insanely high, it would create a really weird situation, right? Like I I personally, my ceiling, I feel like I pay certainly a quarter million dollars a year for a Claude plan for myself. Maybe over a million. Um because if if somebody else is doing it, I'm dead. Like the speed of development is insane, but I'd have to fire a lot of people. Um you basically move to like one one engineer is there's no point in having an engineer who doesn't have uh a Claude Code or Codex subscription, just would be ridiculous. Um and so one engineer is their cost plus the cost of that subscription, and they have to be that good, right? So they have to be as good as like a uh senior anthropic MTS is at model building at like sports trading infra development. Um so it would be a very limited number of people who are expected to push themselves to the absolute limit and be kind of working at a 24-7 kind of cadence, even if they're not working, like they would absolutely need to be running those instances remotely, connected to their phone and a headset and kind of talking to them all the time and just making an insane amount of money. And so then you probably also would throw a lot more resources at lower priced, non-technical human beings, um, to just cover like the human safety gap, right? Like you just you having a lot of people is good for human in the loop security stuff. Um even just hiring HR people, like just negligible people to just exist in an office um for whatever reason would be really important. I say negligible, meaning like their impact on core business punches. Um it would it would be insane. Like I I don't think it would be crazy to compare, like in a in a super highly priced AI environment, I don't think it would be all that different from like professional sports, where it's there are very few people who are engineering and it costs a ton of money for them to do it because the alternatives are just ridiculous. That's interesting. Um I I really hope that doesn't happen. That doesn't sound good.
SPEAKER_00Doesn't sound great, but I mean I don't want to live on it. Yeah. That's why you gotta you gotta get out. You gotta you gotta make your so you know make your hay now, right? Um all right, let's hit the uh trading and market making questions. So, Mr. Nobody, what's the workflow look like for identifying positions the trading team wants to accumulate directionally versus delta neutral? And how is sizing determined?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so they they either come from origination where we have like members of our team who handicap stuff and of opinions versus market. Um, and so then they'll have a side they want to be on, and then it becomes a trading question of how do we get the most down on the side of the best price? What period of time do we have before we think the market catches up to us? How do we prevent the market from catching on to this? If we think it's something we're gonna be doing regularly. Um that's one bucket. And then the other bucket is flagpole events to markets where we say, hey, we know there's gonna be a lot on this. Um, how do we make sure we're capturing as much of this as possible? And and the asymmetry is just like demand side, and we have it to be supply. Um in the latter category, that's that's one of the places it helps having a big staff, right? Constantly identifying, you know, like the other day it was oh, the lowest home run total per game in 50 years in the MLB. And so everybody's doing like featured parlays of unders in MLB today, right? And can we show up with the best in market pricing on all of that so that we're writing all this action? Or, you know, oh, it's tight end week this week. What do we think is gonna happen with all these tight end touchdowns course? What do we actually think the fair is all right? How can we make sure that like we're a big part of that versus oh, this is something everybody else got rich on and we kind of missed it? Um, or got buried on, you know, some you got buried on a lot of this stuff. The fucking Knicks, dude. The Knicks are.
SPEAKER_00Well, are you a Knicks fan? Or like would you consider like okay?
SPEAKER_04So then I'm a I'm a Baltimore guy. I'm a Ravens fan. I I could I could bankrupt the company watching the Ravens win a Super Bowl. That no other team.
SPEAKER_00Joe Flacco returns to Baltimore. Um, let's do this peanut quest. So Peanut gave us a real question, which is not like him, but uh do you have do you think having profiling information on bets you received or order book data is more helpful in determining current current price when market making? Um and he's he's basically pitched that like why would a PM be sharper if a PM doesn't get to see uh doesn't get to do any customer profiling.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04The the flip side of that question is if you have um if you have sharp plays, why would you play them into a venue where they can see who you are and move their lines off you versus playing them pseudo-anonymously into an exchange? Right? Like he's he's identified a true mechanism, which is that counterparty exposure in sportsbooks um kind of sharpens their pencil for them, but that also drives the volume away from those places, makes them subject to manipulation, etc. The game theory optimal state is that um quantity is king, just wherever you have the most size on both sides is the truth. That doesn't mean that actually is the truth, but that's like GTO truth, and disequilibrium exists all the time.
SPEAKER_00In poker?
SPEAKER_04In in everything, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's a tough question. I would say yes. There is equilibrium exists, but it doesn't mean you're always at equilibrium.
SPEAKER_03Oh, sorry, I said disequilibrium exists all the time. Oh yeah, yeah, true. Yeah, true. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I thought you said does. I was like, well, yeah. Um okay, okay. I like it.
SPEAKER_02I can read the next one from Calvin. Um, he he basically was asking what what specifics you're able to provide related to like what type of firewall or what your team will see relative to maybe like a a normal, you know, Novig user in trading now that you're sort of a separate entity.
SPEAKER_04And I understand if there's things you can or can't say here, but no, yeah, because the the answer is good, which is that we we see zero counterparty information, we see the exact same order book that everybody else sees. Um we're hooked up to the API, which a lot of people are. If you want API access, developers at Novig.co, um they're they're speeding up the process of onboarding people into that as they go. The end state for us is an open API, um, but we're not there yet just from like the load handling, I don't think is quite there. But they're they're working towards that very, very fast. That's like a a this year kind of goal. Um so yeah, we we we don't see anything that anybody else can't see. Um, we don't have any advantages that any structural advantages in that regard. We're just connected and trading the the same way we trade everywhere else. We run the same pricing engines and everything that we run everywhere else.
SPEAKER_00So if they beat you for a big number, you can go there. You said that before the show.
SPEAKER_04No, that's that's uh not the case. I was mystificant when I I said that.
SPEAKER_00Uh he that was actually not not said. Um so we got we got Pete. Uh any tips for a beginner automated market maker before the NFL season or some pitfalls to uh avoid um I mean it depends what you're doing.
SPEAKER_04I would like first of all, you your your best firewall is how much money is in your balance. So if you don't know what you're doing yet, just don't put a lot of money in your wallet. Um long term, I would say you have to price the risk you're taking, right? So it there's this, oh, do I want to test this for a while or just rip it? And if you just rip it, you have to put some percentage chance of total loss on it and price that in. And so if you're making, you know, if your ROI is 2% on however much handle, you have to actually say, no, my true ROI is is that minus like risk of total failure times wallet balance. And it's still positive, but I'm like running really hot that I haven't lost my whole balance here yet. You have to constantly and you have to and you have to constantly update those numbers, and then you can't spazz when you get drained. Um and and you have to always believe that it's possible that you get totally drained. Pretend a bank loans you the money and you're like filing reports with them and it's fraud if you lie to them about what you're doing and and see how your risk management really looks when you look at it through that lens.
SPEAKER_02I think that's that's great advice. I know we're how many more minutes do you approximately have? I got nine. Nine minutes. Okay, so I'll combine all we apologize if we don't get to your question. I'll combine sort of all the industry questions into one. We had one question basically, like looking ahead and some like prospects at you know, next election. I know that's been bandied about, you know, like Democrats taking over. So maybe just like whatever you can share um in terms of looking ahead. Also, like there was a question on like states carving it out and being sort of like a patchwork framework. And then we had a uh Canada question. So anything you want to say about the future, like states, Canada, PM industry.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we feel pretty good about our chances of the PM industry as a whole if it goes before the Supreme Court. Um, we really like who's running the CFTC. We think they're actually strongly advocating that they have jurisdiction over all this and fighting the states. The states are just mad about tax money. Yeah, they they're not actually making any kind of legal claim, um, in my opinion. So I that that feels good, but anything could happen. Uh Canada, I don't know what the legal blockers are for Canada. I know we're looking at doing Canada. Um, every time you think you have an answer for how you're gonna release in Canada, you change your underlying legal framework for the United States, which I'm sure slows down Canadian release.
SPEAKER_00Uh just to tack on, when is Victor Roca coming on inside prediction markets?
SPEAKER_04Oh gosh, I really shouldn't ever say his name. I don't want his name in my mouth. The only bad things can come from that.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, we'll put a pin in that, but I'm gonna advocate for that episode. It would be absolutely fire. Um we'll we'll skip to the kind of some other question. I'm gonna do one from from FLUP because this is uh this is a good one to do now. So this is your friend, Chris, head of trading. Um he asked, what's your biggest regret and greatest accomplishment while working at Novig? And same question, but for life.
SPEAKER_04Um biggest regret at Novig is that I didn't um go all in on building our side out faster. I ran it as lean as I could for as long as I could, in part because I felt kind of a like I assumed you were talking about like not putting the targets on the backs of new employees. I felt like if we were too bloated an org, um that if things weren't working, like it it wouldn't reflect well on us. And in retrospect, I should have just like totally believed and and hired a lot more people a lot sooner. Um biggest accomplishment, I I think the biggest accomplishment is is building the level of trust and relationship with um Jacob and Kolecki that it took to even do the split in the first place and be able to operate in this manner because it's a very challenging thing to do. Um there are a lot of parts of it that are uncomfortable and hard to navigate, and we've we've managed to do it. And it just uh, you know, we talk about like you know, building relationships and keeping your side of the street clean over and over again and not really knowing what the ROI is on it today or this year, but eventually it matters. Like that's a spot where it's like I'm just really glad that I always showed up and did what I had to do and and stayed out of like small ball bullshit so that when it was like in order to keep this all going, we have to do this, everybody was able to get on board. Um in life, I mean the biggest regret in life, you can't have big regrets in life, man. What are you what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00I think that's a good answer.
SPEAKER_04I think I mean that the the long arc of my life involves kind of like not really understanding how to exist and function properly as an adult, um, and then you know quitting uh drugs and alcohol, becoming a normal person, getting a wife, having kids, and like figuring life out. And I think that's worth doing. I think you should be like a normal guy who doesn't do insane self-destructive things, and your life's gonna be great. And that's what I would advise anyone to do.
SPEAKER_00That's my uh life arc as well. I can highly recommend that. It's like super OP. There's not if you just start with that, it's you're gonna do okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I don't I'm not down with like unusual people, interesting people. That's not good at all. You should be like the most normal person. Life's too challenging to try and be like one of the complications.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Um, I like that. Okay, what uh SP, you pick one from the the grab bag, I think.
SPEAKER_02We can do maybe we can do I'll I'll I'll throw a two. You can pick which one you want to answer, and then we can we can close it up. So Isaac's does he mitigate his incessant pronatalism when he meets people he doesn't like who thinks he shouldn't who shouldn't procreate for the benefit of the child in society? Or you can uh rag on flup. What's it like working with fluff? Have you ever considered quitting because of him? I'll let you go whatever direction you want to.
SPEAKER_03Um, I'll talk about pronatalism. I do encourage everybody I meet to have kids and be normal, like I just said.
SPEAKER_04Um, but like I said, like I don't really associate with people who I don't think should be having families. That's a I'm gonna quickly walk away from any conversation with a person like that. So I keep I keep my circles um maintained to groups of people that I would all give roughly the same advice.
SPEAKER_02Are you gonna be at Bat Batch? That might be a challenge.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna be at Bat Batch, but I don't talk to everybody at Bat Bash. Okay. Well, if you if nobody kept trying to run away from me last Bat Bash, dude. You were at Bat Batch without a ticket. You were doing the the budget. Oh, I would actually did you have a ticket last year?
SPEAKER_00I just did the year before. No, no, you're thinking of like two years. That's not me.
SPEAKER_03No, I'm telling you. All right, I had a ticket.
SPEAKER_00I went to one seminar and ant seminar, and I didn't want to go to any other.
SPEAKER_03So maybe you weren't staying at Circa. Was that it?
SPEAKER_00That's true. I was not.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So it was I had to like, you know, you had to get in every day. That's what it was. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um but uh yeah, I think that that I mean, sorry to if we didn't get to your question about like the one-on-one basketball game or whatever. Clar's like, well, Clar's has a model for that.
SPEAKER_04Clar's just constantly texting me and like asking for respects because he's just making models at home, handicapping, gambling, Twitter, pickup basketball games for no reason to no end.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that he should come on the podcast?
SPEAKER_04Uh definitely. He absolutely well, oh yeah, I don't know if like he should, like, for his life, but it would be a good guest.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_02Okay. I think uh I think that that about closes it up unless you have uh something you change your mind on or a hot take you're you're looking to fire off before you gotta go.
SPEAKER_04I don't I don't have I have no hot takes really. My I think you know my life is largely about not having hot takes.
SPEAKER_02He stays when we were off air for like one minute, you fired off like four hot takes in one second. So what did I say?
SPEAKER_03You can you can repeat any of it. Well, you called SP a fucking idiot.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess I can give my update uh for Bed Batch.
SPEAKER_03Does anybody disagree with that? No. Go ahead. Do your update.
SPEAKER_02My update is that I I didn't want to get bullied for being an actuary at Bed Badge. So I have left that industry and I am I'm I'm in the uh the sports betting industry now. So there'll probably be more talk about. I know we're short on time, but the podcast, hopefully, all that, you know, it's gonna all remain the same and be good. We'll be here, but just wanted to let let everybody know. And and Henry called me an idiot for for taking this long, I think is is is what he said, something along those lines.
SPEAKER_03And I can tell you that the luminaries of the industry all shared that perspective.
SPEAKER_04Because anybody I talked to, I'd be like, SP, what why is that guy anonymous and not putting his name out there and trying to get a great job? Why is he protecting this actually job? And everybody would just shake their head and be like, I know, he he doesn't get it. All right, well, I'll bet I'll I bet that. I should have reached out to you and said, look, you you got it all wrong and and solved that problem for you. And I did not, so I apologize. But I'm glad you got there on your own.
SPEAKER_00Better late than never. So meaningful, more meaningful that way. Yeah do you have anything to plug?
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, go. I mean we're presenting it at Bat Batch. You and I we're both sold out, dude.
SPEAKER_04Who do you think is gonna get more people at their podcast?
SPEAKER_00You guys we're both sold out.
SPEAKER_04But I think they keep upgrading the room.
SPEAKER_02Uh who's first? Who's who goes first? Is that you?
SPEAKER_00Um I'm gonna not being controversial. Somebody known enough for being controversial, I'm gonna just come out and say, I think I think we're a favorite.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think so. I think you are.
SPEAKER_03But that's what you get for doing two hours. Exactly. You do two hours you you make a lot of.
SPEAKER_00You know who your real fans are. Like you don't have anybody faking it for two hours. Um fan-wise, at least. But uh yeah, uh it's so no, so you guys are all gonna be at Bet Bash. People should come up and ask you to become a market maker to get special perks, I think, or or whatever, right?
SPEAKER_04We'll have we'll have people from the exchange side and people from Mag both there. So whatever you want to do, we can direct you the right person to talk to.
SPEAKER_00All right. Sounds good. We are also gonna be at Bet Bash. Um, and thanks everybody for signing up for the pod. And we will we'll see everybody there. And thanks, Henry, for coming on.
SPEAKER_04For sure. Talk to you guys soon.