Ep. 17 - Founder to Funder: Venture Capital Insights with Brady Sharp

Waiting for the perfect time to leap usually means never leaving your comfort zone at all. In this episode, host Paul Gatling sits down with Brady Sharp, Vice President of Private Credit at Discerning Capital and founder of BroThrow, to map out exactly how to transition from a corporate director role into the fast paced worlds of startup growth and venture capital.

We sit down to unpack the highly tactical realities of scaling a peer-to-peer sports wagering marketplace and underwriting high growth companies. Brady breaks down the mechanics of moving from web platforms to native iOS applications, leveraging organic referral networks, and navigating unexpected regulatory crackdowns from state gaming divisions. He also shares his current analytical framework for evaluating startups, including why Discerning Capital looks for a minimum of $100,000 in monthly ad spend coupled with a sub-twelve-month payback period.

The path of an operator is rarely linear or smooth, frequently demanding that you survive extreme emotional swings and steep learning curves before finding true product market fit. Brady candidly shares the friction points of his early lone wolf mentality and the psychological weight of walking away from a steady corporate paycheck to self-fund a business. Ultimately, viewers will gain a masterclass in capital allocation, discovering why raising equity for marketing is often a massive mistake and how private credit can preserve founder ownership during aggressive scaling phases.

If you care about startup growth mechanics, private credit underwriting, and the realities of leaving a corporate career to build an empire, you’ll get a lot from this episode. Please make sure to subscribe and share the video with a fellow operator.

When you look at your current business or project, what is the biggest hidden assumption you need to challenge with negative feedback this week? Let us know in the comments below.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This is Central to NWA, a UCA podcast. I'm your host, Paul Gatling, and we are bringing the University of Central Arkansas to Northwest Arkansas. Each episode, we will talk with leaders, alumni, and innovators driving this region forward. People who are shaping industries and defining what is next for our state. Let's get started. All right, welcome back to another episode of Central to NWA conversations with UCA alumni business leaders and the people helping shape Northwest Arkansas through their leadership, through their entrepreneurship, and through innovation. And so my guest today is someone I've known for a few years, dating back to uh my business journal days. Um he had a really great story to tell. We told it. Uh we reconnected later, not long after I started working in Northwest Arkansas for UCA because that is his alma mater. And so I'm glad that we get a chance to sit down and tell your story uh again, of course, with a few important updates. Brady Sharp, uh, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Paul. Excited to be here. Yeah. So uh all right, Brady is a two-time UCA graduate in mathematics 2010 and 2011. Spent more than a decade in corporate finance-related roles for an up-and-coming retailer in Bentonville known as uh Walmart. And then he walked away from that to become a founder, built a successful startup from scratch called Brothrow. And that's a sports wagering technology platform, uh, but recently has gone from founder to helping invest and mentor and kind of pour into and advise other founders. Um, so to me, that's a pretty interesting journey. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah, it's uh it's it's neat to be sitting on the other side of the desk. Yeah. As a founder, you're usually out pitching for money and you know, asking investors for money. And so to be sitting on the side of the desk and being asked for money now, it's certainly an interesting flip. Uh, but it's yeah, it's been a fun arc so far and happy to be where I'm at right now.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Yeah. So the company is called uh Discerning Capital. It's a Las Vegas uh company. Uh we will get into that uh more specifically a bit later. But you're still living in northwest Arkansas. How has the transition been? Yeah, uh still living Fayville.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

I've been here for I guess almost 15 years now. Um, went to graduate school up here too. Um, just couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with my life after leaving UCA. Uh but no, love it here. I've got a family here, wife, two kids, my daughter's seven, my son's five. Uh, we love everything about Northwest Arkansas. I finally got my family up here, my younger brother's here. So the whole Sharp clan is an NWA. Okay, yeah. You put the recruiting pitch on. Yeah, yeah. It took uh two kids of mine and then two kids of my brothers to to sell them.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

But yeah, finally got them here. Yeah, when you put grand grandkids into the equation, that uh usually is the is the closer. All right. So well, it's exciting to have you here. We're gonna talk about all that and and a lot of things and what your work looks like. Um, but let's first go back uh uh several years um from Cabot to Conway. You're from Cabot originally. Grew up in Cabot. Right. Well paint that picture. What was life like growing up in Cabot?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Gosh, uh grew up in and way out in the sticks is what I would say. I was we were country kids. We my dad was a firefighter in Little Rock and he was a siding contractor on his days off from the fire station. Um, just grew up riding bikes, throwing rocks, you know, doing a lot of outdoor stuff, fishing, playing golf, playing baseball, basketball, all kinds of sports. Um, just had nothing bad to say about life in Cabot, I guess, as a kid. I will say now that I'm in Fayetteville, I've moved to the center of town because I wanted to be uh a little bit closer to everything that I was growing up. But um, but yeah, Conway after Cabot was was outstanding. Like I got involved at the honors college there at UCA after high school and uh just had a great experience. Nothing, nothing but good things to say about Cabot, Conway Central, and so on in general.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Well, yeah, you're from Cabot. I'm from Bryant, and those places, you know, both you know, and Sheridan and other, you know, has a huge school district, expansive school district. Like you say, you grew out in the sticks and so, but that's still part of the Scab Cabot school district. And graduated with like 600, I think, close to. Yeah. And then and now it's probably close to a thousand in Cabot. And just like all those other places and around Central Arkansas, they keep growing. Um your career path, we kind of discussed, you know, the work you've done, your experience, you know, to me, it paints the picture of uh analytical numbers, data. Was that were you always you know inclined toward that type of thinking as a as a student?

SPEAKER_01 4:38

I I you know it's funny, I I did two stints in grad school, and that's just because I didn't know what I wanted to do. Yeah, it was just I was kind of good at math, I guess you could say, growing up. Um, and so that was what I pursued when I got to UCA. Um, but no, as far as the career progression goes, I my first real job I mowed yards for the longest time. Okay. I had a business partner and we were running like I think 45 yards at our peak.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

And so entrepreneurship was on.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Entrepreneurship was was early on, yeah. I I I had one summer in Cabot where I worked on the golf course, making like five dollars and twenty-five cents an hour. And it was mostly weed eating around ponds and stepping on snakes. And I decided there's probably a better way to spend my time than that. Right. Uh so yeah, we started a lawn mowing business and and grew that pretty considerably and did that all through high school and undergrad and college. And that was actually one of the factors I was like, uh chose to go to UCA because I wanted to keep the business going and be close enough to Cabot to go back and forth on the weekends, okay, make some money. Um, but no, I I my first real job was at Axiome and Little Rock. Um, and it was actually a friend of mine from UCA that kind of connected me into the people there at Axiome. Um and it wasn't a very analytical role, it was actually sort of a marketing PR type role, which was very atypical, I guess, for my education at the time. Uh, but it was my first like sit in an office at a desk, you know, have an eight to five type schedule. Um, did that. And uh it was it was good. It was a great experience. I was I was glad to be uh kind of graduating from mowing yards into doing something a little more official, I guess you could say. Um, but from there, uh I went into the furniture world. There was a company in Arkansas that headquartered, well, it was actually headquartered in Oklahoma at the time, a company called FFO Home or Furniture Factory Outlet. I met, this was actually at a UCA football tailgate where this where this all transpired. One of my good buddies, uh, also a UCA student, his grandfather was the founder of the company. And we were at a UCA, a football tailgate um on Bruce Street. And I, his his dad was there, who was the CEO at the time, and then his CFO, who was a good friend, was also there and met them at the tailgate and you know, told them a little bit about my background. They're like, Oh, you should come intern for us one summer. And so that kind of like kicked off my career right there was at a UCA football tailgate. There you go, many, many years ago. Right. Uh, but that led to my first uh non-internship, I guess, corporate job in the furniture industry. Yeah, and that was more analytical, working in finance and doing a lot of strategies. Yeah, the numbers, the math, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Go back to more of my up my alley. Yeah, go back to you. You said you were always, yeah, you you liked math or you were good at math, or you why is that? You know, most kids would not say that. Most teens would not say that what made you like mathematics? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

It was just uh I think there's just a certain beauty in numbers, I guess. It's it's there's a very black and white nature to things and and math. And when you get into the upper levels of uh of mathematics, you start to lose, you start to get into a little bit of ex abstract stuff and you get away from black and white. But uh, I guess I just always enjoyed uh seeing things tick and tie. And I've I've been told that I might have been a good accountant too, would have been another good career path for me because I enjoy the the nature of I always give my buddies that are accountants a hard time saying, well, it's just adding, subtracting, and a little bit of multiplication. Same thing every day. Yeah, it's really not that hard. Um, but no, I guess I just like the the the the black and white nature of you, it's it's either right or wrong, and there's always gonna be an answer you can get to at the end of the day, and there should be a way to get there that you can figure out. So that was, I guess, compelling.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Sure. All right. So, like we said, you got your bachelor's and master's degree uh at UCA, both in mathematics, mathematics. Jokingly, of course, didn't know what you wanted to do, so you stay there. But what else kept you there? I mean, you you you had the honors college, you were in Greek life, you were in some, you know, student social club. How much of those experiences um do you recall and how much do you still lean on those things today? Greek life was huge.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

I I pledged as a SIGEP at UCA my, I guess that would have been spring of my freshman year, and that just really opened up my network. Um, that was the uh it was just the biggest opportunity to make new friends, build new relationships, a lot of which I still have today, several of which are are now here in Northwest Arkansas too. Um the football tailgate that I alluded to, the the first job that I got was a result of that. Um, I think what kept me there and you know why I stuck around for grad school was was the teaching opportunity. I'd always loved to teach. Um, and being a teaching assistant in graduate school was a really cool thing. I uh it's funny, when I moved to Fayetteville, I actually left Arkansas, I left UCA, went to Colorado, worked in Breckenridge as a mountain safety patroller for a season of my life um and kind of took a gap year before coming back to Fayetteville for graduate school. But um I there was there was a time in my life that I thought I was gonna be a teacher. And still today, I think that could be something that I might enjoy, you know, later in life, you know, post I guess professional portion of my career, if you will. But um, yeah, I hated the research. I was never any good at research, but the teaching part of it, you know, writing tests, grading papers, and just lecturing, I always enjoyed that. Yeah. And that was uh that was a com that was a big reason I guess I stuck around UCA because there was an opportunity to be a teaching assistant and a student at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Who were you a teaching assistant for?

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Oh gosh. Um, I do not remember in the math department. So I I've I've had like three distinct teaching jobs in my life, one at UCA. When I was in Colorado that that summer after you know, went ski season shut down. I actually taught at Colorado Mountain College. I did business Cal and a couple of staff classes there. And then I was a teacher or a teaching assistant at the U of A in their economics department too. And uh I couldn't tell you who I TA'd were back at UCA. It's been so long.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah, but you you probably had some um, I would think you would have some some people that you recall as a mentor or an impactful teacher or instructor that kind of put you on this trajectory career path that you're on.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Yeah, Dr. Lee um is is the first name that comes to mind in the maths department back from uh linear out. No, it wasn't linear algebra, it was uh gosh, what was the name of it? It was an advanced math class, I can't remember. But uh I I distinctly remember um really enjoyed all of his classes. He was a great teacher and uh yeah, put me on a path to continue, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Well, hopefully we can continue that path. Um, we were talking off off camera. Our College of Business Dean Tim Bisping was in Northwest Arkansas recently for a few meetings. You had the opportunity to visit with him um at length, and uh, and I hope that that's somebody that we can keep you connected with. I think you talked about, you know, uh maybe scratching that teaching itch and coming back to Conway uh this semester to to speak to some of our entrepreneurial students and uh and kind of do some interaction with that. That excites me. I hope it excites you.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Yeah, definitely. Um introduced Dr. Bispink to a new uh cool new coffee shop in Fayetteville that I think he liked. Uh but yeah, we talked a lot about the entrepreneurship program, the pitch competitions that happen there. And um, yeah, I plan to get involved. Um, if nothing else, is to come as like a guest lecturer and potentially judge a pitch competition at some point. I think it'll be a lot of fun and sort of a natural fit based on where I'm at in my career right now. Uh, you know, in terms of getting involved on campus again.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yeah. Well, we would love it. We would love it. And we're gonna we're gonna move that ball down the field to get you down to Conway. All right. So while you were studying math in Conway, another idea was quietly starting to take shape in the fraternity house and with fraternity brothers and um um Bro Throw, which we'd mentioned. That's the peer-to-peer sports wagering platform. Obviously, did not start as a company, but started as like a text message, right? Tell us tell us the story of Bro throw and that idea.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Well, I told you I loved numbers. And it was in college that I figured out you can bet on sports. Uh, and it just it seemed beatable, I guess is the the easy way of saying it. Like it seemed like you could figure out a system to win more than you lost. And but the problem was there just weren't many, you know, safe feeling ways to bet back then. This was pre-2018 when legalization kind of swept uh throughout the United States. But back then it was, you know, find a bookie or uh bet offshore and you know, deal in it was just a very kind of greasy feeling way to find a way to the sports bet.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Um, and so yeah, in the fraternity days, it was like we there was a bunch of guys doing this, and we were like, well, why mess around with all of these like slimy ways to to get down a bet? Let's just bet with each other and not have to pay the juice, the premium that you pay when you go make a bet at a sports book or a casino or you know, a bookie, wherever. And so yeah, it did start as a a group chat that grew into, I'm gonna say we had a hundred something people in there uh at one point. And it was bros throwing out bets for each other. And if someone wanted to take the other side, they could. And you know, the traditional way that you bet on sports through a sports book is you typically if you want to win a hundred dollars on on you know, let's say a 50-50 outcome, you've got to bet 110 to win a hundred. So that $10 extra that you pay really adds up over time, right? When you lose, you lose 110 instead of you know on a 50-50 outcome. In theory, you should lose 100 when you've betting 100. Uh, and so that was the, I guess, magic of the group chat is we we weren't betting 110 to win, and back then it was probably betting 11 to win 10. Uh, you know, we were all broke college students, but uh but it was 10 to win 10 instead of 11 to win 10. And the whole idea was let's save some money, let's let's express our sports opinions with each other instead of you know anywhere else. And so yeah, that's how it started. And um, it was just it was chaotic, yeah. On the on a college football Saturday, you can imagine what a a group texts with a hundred and something guys, and it looks like it's just hard to keep track of. Everyone had to, you know, do their own math and come back and figure out if they won or lost, who they owed. And so we just the idea for Brothrow was just let's put some organization around what we're doing. Yeah, we're probably not the only ones doing this, or probably plenty of you know groups of friends that are that are doing this. And so, yeah, that was kind of I guess where it originated was back in the fraternity house days when we were betting.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

So, at what point after those many endless Saturdays of chaos and you know, daylight to midnight and just going back and forth, what point did you realize that there um there might be a business idea hiding with with inside all this chaos?

SPEAKER_01 15:25

So after moving, after moving back from Colorado, going to grad school here, went to work for the furniture company, did that for four years. And when I left the furniture business, I went to work for uh, again, a connection through my Greek life days, who had started a company here called Lauren James. And uh it was very much startup culture there. Like they were in their third year or fourth year of operation, still a very early stage company. And so it was, you know, that the environment, the culture there was different than what I had experienced in the furniture world. It was uh long days, long nights, everyone kind of grinding behind uh, you know, a central purpose. And I guess it was it was then when I kind of got a little taste of startup culture that I was like, oh, I can maybe take this idea and flesh it out and see where we could go. And so that was, I guess that was 2017-ish when this came about. And so that was when I really, I guess, started to like put pen to paper and and give it some serious thought on is this commercially feasible? What would I need to do? Um, I have a good friend here in Northwest Arkansas who you know, Kyle Reynolds. Yep. Um he's an attorney from the oil and gas space, and but he's he's one of the smartest dudes I know. So I took the idea to first. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I said, hey, like what are the do's and don'ts here? What you know, what what are the constraints you know that we need. This is a highly regulated industry, obviously. You know, sports betting, any gambling, anything that touches gambling is highly regulated. And so uh yeah, he he was very instrumental in those early days of kind of like fleshing out the idea, um, checking boxes or giving me a list of boxes that I would need to go check to to make it viable. But yeah, it was those uh those those early days at Lauren James, the the startup clothing company that I think kind of inspired me or gave me the confidence to like pursue my own entrepreneurship.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, the startup grind, uh as they call it. And of course, like most startups, this was not a uh an overnight success, right? I mean, you're you're juggling it's still not a success. It's still, you know, we're still grinding. Yeah, that's not over. Yeah, absolutely. So you you you spent like we alluded to, you spent years working in finance uh with Walmart and just kind of building bro throw on the nights and the weekends. And yep. Uh just w what did that balancing act actually, you know, look like, you know, personally and professionally, trying to, you know, you've got a career, quote unquote, but then you're also trying to to build this idea.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yeah. So I left Lauren James after about a year, and I had actually turned down a job at Walmart at the time that I started at Lauren James to go, you know, give it a shot there. Um, went back to Walmart, interviewed again for a different role, which I was glad that I um, you know, took on a different role than the the one that I was initially offered there. But um after about a year, uh there's there's people at Walmart, this was my experience, they would tell you like it takes like three years to kind of get up to speed, understand, because this is humongous organization, right? Figuring out how to navigate, who to talk to, where to go get information. Um, and so after about a year, uh I I just felt like I could the nice thing about Walmart was you you could kind of shut down at the end of the day. It was you you had to deliver on what you needed to deliver on, but when you when you went home, that was it. You know, you kind of had some free time at the end of the day. Um, and so I I really appreciated my time there, really appreciated the culture that Walmart's built. I have nothing but good things to say about it. Um, and it allowed me to kind of have the mental capacity to shift gears when I got home and work on something else, which I at Lauren James, I couldn't do that. It was, you know, I was burning the midnight oil, you know, constantly thinking about what was going on there. And so it was it was that it was moonlights, it was weekends, it was putting ideas down on paper. One of the first things that we did, we me and Kyle um was he started teeing up introductions to attorneys to get legal opinions on you know the business model. And so there was a lot of like early research that happened there. Um, had my first my daughter was born in 2019. So that was maybe a year, year and a half into my Walmart career. Walmart has a very generous parental leave policy. So I had six weeks off of work for uh, you know, to take care of my family, obviously. But there was also some, you know, there's some things that to start a business that you need to get done during business hours, Monday through Friday, eight to five, that it's difficult to do when you're, you know, working a full-time job. So that allowed me to uh talk, meet with attorneys, go set up bank accounts, get the you know, legal entity form, doing a lot of things that it would have been hard to do without that like six week span of kind of sprinting on some initial startup things. But uh yeah, that was that was the early days was um making making the most of the time, you know, that I had.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yeah, growing family, new job. You still have this idea that you're that you're trying to advance. So eventually, though, you know, and you mentioned 2018, the Supreme Court decision that really um allowed gambling in this country to change forever. I mean, all the platforms, all the all the uh advertising, all that. So eventually uh you reached a point where uh you had to choose, right? What for what forced that decision? What were the single most important factors that led to your decision to go all in, no pun intended, on Pro Throw?

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah. I uh so two years into Walmart, I was promoted to director and moved into merchandise finance, and I was in a uh sort of a strategic role on customer returns before that. Um and is it's just more demanding of your time. And what I I and we started to see, we launched our our beta for Bro Throw, I want to say fall of 2019. Um, and we started to see some traction going into 2020. Football season 2020 was when we really started to to see some significant growth. And I guess I got to the point where I was like, I'm I'm trying to do a balancing act here, and I'm not doing good at either. You know, I'm I'm I'm trying to do too much. Um, and yeah, I continued on with both. And this may have been my timeline, it's it feels like a lifetime ago now, but um I ended up leaving Walmart in 2022. And it it just got to that point where, like I said, it it felt like I was trying to do two jobs and I wasn't doing my best at either one of them, and I had to make a choice. And um, I felt like we had enough momentum with Bro throw. We had raised a little bit of capital, we had some more capital that had been promised. Um, and and frankly, part of when I was pitching for capital, some of the feedback that I got was well. If you're not full time behind the business, like are you convicted? Right. Like, do you how much conviction do you have if you're still, you know, trying to balance both? And so when that started to become a blocker, you know, for the raising money for growing the business, that was like, okay, this I've got to make a decision about it.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Somebody tells you that, that's not ever going to leave your head. Correct. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Yeah. Um, and and you know, everyone, and I had kind of uh not kind of, I was very intentional with my managers at Walmart, my coworkers, letting them know I'm building this, like this is something that's going on outside of my work hours, and kind of brought everyone along the journey with me. So it wasn't a surprise necessarily to anyone when I left. And I felt like I left on good terms and had a lot of people rooting for me. Some of the people that I met, you know, built my network at Walmart, became investors into the company. And so um, again, nothing but good things to say about my time there and really attribute a lot of being able to become an entrepreneur to the time that I spent there.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

So did did you just wake up one morning and and know that, okay, this is what I, this is the trajectory I need to go off on here? Uh what was the decision-making process like?

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Yeah, it was some well, we had had, let's see, my daughter was 2019, my son was born in 2021, and it was a lot of conversations with my wife, Brittany, about, hey, I think this is the right move. I've I've got some capital that I feel confident that we can raise. We're on this trajectory. Here's the bit the business plan is solid. Um, it wasn't necessarily overnight, but it was just, it was probably a month of feeling like I need to make this leap. And, you know, if worse comes to worse, like I felt like I could go, you know, get another job at Walmart if this went down, you know, the drain. And so it was just building up the confidence to make that jump. And uh, because it's hard, you know, when you're in a good career path and you've been promoted, you're making good money to take a significant pay cut and go work for yourself. And uh it was very rewarding. The I always tell people like the roller coaster of emotions that you experience as an entrepreneur are a lot higher and a lot lower. The there's a lot of lows. Yeah, there's a few highs. Um, but the lows are really, really low and the highs are really, really high. And so you just experience things, I think, in a different order of magnitude than you do in a corporate career. Um, so a lot of it was just having to get confident enough to walk away from you know what was a good career.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Yeah, and a and a steady paycheck. I mean, that's that's got to be a scary feeling. For sure. Yeah. Well, what's scarier though? What walking away from a steady paycheck or just always thinking, you know, what if? What if I don't do this? What if I don't see where this goes? What if I don't the paycheck.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Yeah. We had bought a house. We bought a new house. We'd moved over to the east side of Fayetteville in 2017. I had two kids at this point, both in daycare. Brittany was working full-time. She's a registered dietitian working in a clinic in Fayetteville. And so um, you know, the she's it's it's she's been very graceful, you know, through the years in supporting the family. But um, yeah, definitely leaving the paycheck was sure the most uh nerve-wracking.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah, I think um, and you kind of uh talked about it there, the roller coaster, right? I think kind of people kind of romanticize the startup world and just the the the highs and the lows and and all of that. And um, you know, what was what was the lowest moment as we as we're getting into bro throw? You're doing this now, you're you're you're focused on it 27 hours a day. What were what were some of the highs and what were some of the the lows in those first couple of years? Um the first thing that came to mind when you asked that was a low.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

The lows are pretty memorable.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Um they outnumber the highs early on.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

The yes, the lows always outnumber the highs, yeah, for sure. Um now there's the highs are high enough to like offset, I guess, the accumulation of the lows. But it was actually after this was 2022 into 2023 when we had done some, you were part of this, we had done some press uh in in Arkansas. Yep. And part of my early, I guess, founding idea was this would be Bro Throw would be a great user acquisition tool for traditional sports books. They needed something to differentiate themselves from the competition because when you look at DraftKings, FanDuel, Beth Saracen here in Arkansas, um, the options that we had available to us at you know, post-2018 when it was legalized, the experience was the same. You logged in, you saw, you know, a two by three grid of here's the spread, the money line, and the total. You picked what you wanted and they named a price and you took it. And it was just it was pretty uniform across everything. And so my early idea was well, let's sell this as a differentiating tool. And so we, I kind of went on a PR campaign. You wrote some stuff about us in the NWA Business Journal. Um, we had a couple other like state media pieces come out. We had gone through the process of pitching two different state agencies, the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, um, the Arkansas Venture Capital Development Fund. There's some tax credits out there for startups and things of that nature. Well, I'm getting to the low here. The low was that was a nice high, right? Getting the press to come out, you know, having some feature articles out there and stirring up some attention. Well, when you stir up attention, you stir up everyone's attention. And we got we caught the attention. We operate in a very, like I said, highly regulated industry. We've carved out what I think is a strong legal position and on our legal, you know, studies that we've commissioned would support that too. Uh, but not necessarily every regulator in every state's gonna agree with that. So when we had this PR frenzy, we had we were contacted by the Colorado Division of Gaming Enforcement in Kansas. Both contact us and said, Hey, uh, we don't necessarily like what you're doing here. We'd like you, we'd encourage you to come apply for a license. But if you don't want to do that, we want you to shut down operations in the state. And that was literally like right on the heels of you know, all this press that we had started up. And so it was like this nice high to this really, really low, feeling like, well, shoot this, you know, how many other regulators are gonna see this and hear this and you know, think the same thing? And so we did. We had to implement um geolocation technology and you know, essentially carve out those two states. And we didn't have a big presence in either one. And in both cases, the regulators were, you know, very understanding and I would say pro-innovation. It was just they wanted uh they we we shared all of our legal opinions with them and kind of went through the process and and and the the conclusion at the end of it was we needed to shut down there. And so that was a that was a pretty big low.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Well, it's followed by a high. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the the successes. I mean, what did success start looking like as you as you got some momentum and started growing the venture and and started uh just stacking one day after the next?

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Um it was just growth. We saw a lot of organic referral growth. And when that is, I think, the most significant sign if you are a B2C company, um, having people tell other people about your product, your idea, whatever it is, I think is a significant sign of traction. And we were seeing really strong uh referral mechanics in in the business. And that kind of I would say that was the early indication of, hey, we've got some good product market fit here. We've got some stickiness. Our you know, 30-day retention after sign-up looks really good. The lifetime value of a customer, we're starting to understand how long people will stick around. And um, the whole business is built on a subscription model. It's very different from you know a traditional sports book where you're not when you're betting on Bro Throw, you're not betting against Bro throw. When you go to bet on DraftKings or Fandle or anywhere else, you're betting against, you know, the house, so to speak. Um, all we did was provide a marketplace, a peer-to-peer marketplace for people to bet directly against each other, and we monetized it through subscription. Um so seeing, you know, the rates of people subscribing, the number of active users, the stickiness, that was uh, I think what gave us the sense of, hey, we've we've got something sticky here and uh we need to keep pushing money into it and finding marketing channels that worked. We did a lot of experimental marketing across YouTube, uh, podcasters. We did some sponsorships of uh some media outlets in the sports world. And, you know, we hit some, I think we hit some home runs and we also struck out with some stuff that we did. Um, but it was all part of the learning process in terms of figuring out how what's the best way to put marketing money to work and uh get a return on that.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Okay. Well, so in 2026 now, you've just you've taken a new job. You haven't separated from Bro Throw completely, but to me that tells me that Bro Bro Throw is in a really, really good place. We're in a good spot. Yeah, 2026. So just give our listeners an overview of of of the uh the platform right now, just in terms of your just activity or downloads or just how you measure your success right now.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Yeah, we've got about 10,000 users on the app. We're actually an app now. We started as mobile web first, and that was a strategic decision. When you build on the web, there's just less uh, I guess, regulatory tape that you have to work your way through. But we made the decision last fall to build an iOS app because we felt like that was the next iteration of Bro Throw. So we've we've put that into the App Store now. You can search it in the Apple App Store. We're not live on Android yet. We're working on this summer actually to launch our Android app. Um, but things are going well. It's still growing. We still see really strong referral mechanics. We've got some good um sponsorship deals in place with some betting tools, research tools in the sports betting space where we drive a lot of traffic from them. Um, but in terms of you know what's next for me, uh, I I want to bring, and let me back up and say I'm now in the venture capital world, right? And we invest into, and I can tell you more about discerning here in a minute. But I I the way that I met these guys, I did a pitch competition for Bro Throw in in Las Vegas back in 2020 at the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Uh Association's annual show. And one of the judges there, um, who would go on to become one of the managing partners of discerning capital where I'm at now, he was at Las Vegas Sands at the time. I followed up with him after the pitch competition. I got second and I wanted to know, you know, hey, what did you think of the business? Like, give me some feedback because these pitch competitions are you get three minutes. Yeah. And you know, you're in front of a panel of judges, an audience, and you get three minutes to pitch your business and three minutes of QA, and it's just extreme, it goes by, you know, yeah, super fast. Um, but kind of felt like he was someone that I I really respected, that I could tell was respected within the industry. And so made an effort, you know, stay close to him over the last six years. Um, so fast forward to now, and I'm in a spot where I've I've wanted to bring someone else in to handle marketing and growth. I really enjoy the product development side of Bro Throw. So working with Clayton, our primary full stack developer, we've now hired an outside firm to kind of augment our development resources. We're working with a company out of Boston called Kirschbaum Development that's helping build new features. That's the part of Bro Throw that I've always enjoyed, really loved, and you know, building new things. The I'll be the first one to tell you like I'm not a good marketer. I'm not a good uh hype man, I guess you could say, for uh, you know, strategically deploying marketing capital. And so uh I've had this offer come along a couple of months ago with discerning, and it felt like a really natural fit to move into the next stage of my career and have someone else come in and uh you know put their hands on on Broathro and see where they can take it. So we're in a good spot. It's it's positively cash flowing business, it's growing organically. Um, we've got a few things to fix in terms of our customer acquisition funnel and getting more people down to from sign up into making their first bet. And we've got a lot of work plotted to do that. But um, yeah, I'd say it's it's in a good spot. I'm in a good spot, and we're gonna be hiring here probably within the next month. Good. Uh, for someone to come in and be primarily a growth-oriented operator. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

All right. So discerning capital, vice president of private credit. So explain what you do. What are your days look like? Yeah, what's the role look like?

SPEAKER_01 34:20

I guess to tell you the two-minute rundown of discerning capital. Um, Davis Catlin, who I mentioned, was the judge on the pitch competition way back in 2020. He and his co-founder, David Williams, founded the company four years ago. And they we we do, so we have kind of two sides of the firm. There's the traditional equity investment where we make minority ownership stake investments into series A, series B growth stage companies. The core thesis of discerning capital is regulated gambling is a tough industry to crack into. There's not a lot of generalist venture capital in that space because of the strict licensing requirements for investors. And so there's not a lot of investors that are kind of willing to go through that process to get licensed to invest in. So the result of that is sort of a moat around regulated gambling and everything gambling related. These guys have gone and gotten licensed uh in the US, internationally. We have, you know, investments all over the world at this point. That's that's kind of the equity side of the business. Where I sit is on the private credit side of the business. And so what we're doing there is finding quality growth stage companies that need capital to finance their marketing that realize that it's really expensive to go raise equity to spend it on marketing, right? Selling a chunk of your business to go, you know, if you're running a B2C platform like Brother, you should be spending 50 to 60% of your revenue on marketing, new user acquisition. So to go raise equity to do that is really expensive. Um, it's it's very difficult, if not impossible, to go to a traditional bank and, you know, seek financing for marketing. Uh, and so where the private credit side of discerning comes in is filling that gap for founders that need growth capital, that don't want to sell down a big chunk, you know, give up a big ownership stake in their business, but have compelling enough unit economics that they believe and have exhibited, you know, through some history that that can scale. And so that's where we come in is essentially lending money to operators to go finance to co-finance. With they have some skin in the game too, as part of this, but to co-finance their marketing and help them grow.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

How do you evaluate businesses? What do you look for? What does your your experience tell you to look for?

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Yeah, um, that's where you know this role has kind of been a good fit for me because of my finance background, and then because of my background with Bro Throw. It's it was, and I think that's why Davis and David, you know, both believed in me for this role. And and to be clear, I'm very early on, like I'm two months into this role. But um what I look for first and foremost is you look at the the team, the the founding team. And you you can kind of tell are these good founders? Are they capable? Um, I think you can tell a lot by just having a conversation by using the product that they built. That's one of the things that I really enjoy about this is actually you know downloading new apps and trying new things and and you know, being involved with some of the uh experiencing the product. Um, but we look for financial traction too. We want to see that you've been able to deploy, you know, significant marketing budget and do it successfully. We look for companies that are spending at least $100,000 a month on Meta, uh, Google, TikTok, affiliate channels to do their marketing and that have paybacks on that ad spend under 12 months. So, you know, scalable unit economics, being able to spend money, return it within a year, um, and and you know, that that looking at your customer acquisition costs against the lifetime value of a customer is sort of key and you know, the underwriting process for figuring out our companies investable or yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

So I know you're early in a couple months in. I'm assuming you've talked to some founders. You've you've talked to a lot. Okay, great. So what are those conversations like in in terms of those people know that they're talking to somebody who's done it? Yeah. Who's lived it, who's gone the down the same path that they're going on? Are the are those conversations different?

SPEAKER_01 38:14

A lot of the conversations, to be honest with you, because of the gambling industry is very small. Like once you get inside the walled garden, quote unquote, of gambling, you realize it's a pretty small world. Um, so I I was very friendly with a lot of founders, you know, from going to industry conferences and trade shows, that type of thing, um, early on. Um, so a lot of these relationships aren't new relationships that I've been, you know, building in the last two months. So a lot of it is going back to people that I've already known and I know their products and rekindling uh you know conversations just from a different seat than I was in before, um, which I think is another reason that I was a good fit for for this role is because of you know the network that I've built in the industry. But um I it it's been it's been fun. It's it's sitting in a different seat now is the only difference, but uh just going back to old relationships and you know checking in on the business, seeing how they're doing, seeing if they're ready to grow more.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Yeah. Give um give yourself some your own advice. Give yourself some advice. If you were starting Bro Throw today, would you do anything differently?

SPEAKER_01 39:18

Yeah. Um, I I kind of went, I would say lone wolf for the first several months. And that was intentional early on because I felt like I wanted to make a lot of the design decisions with speed and get something to market really, really quickly. Um it's been, you know, seven, eight years now since sports betting was legalized in I think going on four, 30 something, maybe 40 states now in in the U.S. And so the market is um it's grown significantly. It's taken longer than I probably thought it was gonna take back, you know, in 2018, 2019. Um, but instead of going lone wolf, I would have brought in, and I have two co-founders who are here in northwest Arkansas too. They've they've not worked full-time for the business, but they were the earliest capital alongside mine into the business and were very instrumental in uh you know using the product, testing um design decisions too, once I brought them in. And um, I guess what I would do differently is just stand up the team earlier on, raise more capital to be able to support, you know, three or four full-time employees from the jump. Um, because I think, again, talking to the companies that I'm talking to now, that's one of the first sort of qualitative things that I look at is how's the founding team? Like, what's the cohesion level? Like, are are these people that you know have good track records uh in in their careers? And um, so that's that's a big piece of it is you know, growth stage, early stage companies that you're you're investing in the founders as much as you are, you know, if not more, than the business itself. And so that's definitely something that I would have done differently is is establish the team earlier on and um you know, not be a lone wolf, I guess you could say, entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

Right. I want to go back to something you said earlier about just the the general startup ecosystem here in Northwest Arkansas and which has developed, you know, when you mentioned Lauren James, and that brings back a lot of memories. That was back in the early days, I think, of you know, my business journal days, the startup ecosystem days. It has just evolved as something so completely different now, 15, 18 years uh on. So um, and you were part of that. You were part of that with Lauren James and Lance and those guys, and you were part of it on your own. And why do you think it is that this region has gotten to the point where it is right now? There is a lot of capital coming into this market. There's a lot of ideation coming out of this market, uh, and just a lot of overall interest in this market. Why do you think that is? What does this region do especially well that gives us that uh that reputation?

SPEAKER_01 41:56

I think it's a mix of strong SP 500 companies that are here, um, Walmart, JB Hunt, um Tyson, big companies and the university. You've got a tier one, you know, university here, and it's all sort of in the same corridor. These companies attract very diverse talent from all over the world. And so you've got sort of this melting pot of very talented people in a small, concentrated area. And I think a natural byproduct of having education alongside you know very successful big businesses is these sort of offshoot startups. People have ideas when they're working in these environments. And uh as long as we have the university, Walmart, these are these other big companies up here, I think you'll continue to see entrepreneurship grow. There's there's so many resources here too. There's startup junkie, they were very helpful early on, like uh just one example, like doing competitor research when you're starting out. Um, pitchbook is is a really nice, it's a valuable service to have, but it's like 75 grand a year. If you want to go get your own license of pitchbook, you can go to startup junkie and they can look stuff up for you, you know, using their subscription. So there's and then there's state level resources that I mentioned earlier on, too, that are really, I think, starting to foster, you know, the startup community, not just here, but across the state. But um I do think it's the blend of having young people in education going through college here and the big companies that we have here that that produces a little bit of magic.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Yeah, and you know, I'm glad you said from all over the world and not country. I think I think people know that, but I still think there's certain people that don't realize that there are people coming from all over the world to Northwest Arkansas for uh varying reasons business or just a personal reason. And I think that's only going to continue with you know the innovation and the innovators that are gonna be attracted by um three things. Um and Rex Nelson wrote about this in the newspapers. Not my idea, but he called them Islands of Innovation, and that's the Walmart campus. Yep. The Crystal Bridges Campus of Art and Wellness, which includes the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, the Heartland Holin's Whole Health Institute, and then the STEM University that's being developed on the old Walmart Home Office site. It's it fascinates me that in three years, uh Bentonville is going to have two four-year degree granting universities in that town. Um and that just that blows my mind. Yeah. And so all of that is just going to contribute to more people coming in, more ideas and more innovation and more um startup ecosystem activity. Um so that's exciting. Um, so listen, let's say there's a UCA student um watching this podcast today, maybe sitting in Conway with an idea scribbled in the notebook and and they're they're getting excited about listening to you and hearing your story. What's your advice to them? What would you tell them?

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Go tell people about it. I think a lot of early founders make the mistake of thinking, well, someone's gonna steal my idea if I go tell people about it. And the reality is, is there is a big gap between idea and execution. And the odds that someone else is gonna take your idea and go rip it off before you can, I think are just so incredibly low that it shouldn't be a factor. Sure. And so I think going and getting that early feedback, telling people about your idea, leveraging your relationships, your network to help you flesh out that that idea is like the best thing that you can do. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Kind of a final playoff question is that you know, you spent time around a lot of founders uh in your job, and even the last, you know, several several years. What is the deciding factor that separates the ones who make it from the ones who don't make it?

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Conviction, believing in your idea. Um, and I think conviction comes from conversations, you know, validation from the people around you. Um, and and you need to find people that aren't just gonna tell you, yeah, that's a great idea. You you want people that are gonna be candid and direct with you. And and that's not always easy to find. But if if you know people and and and preface your conversations with, I can handle my I've got a thick skin, you know, I can handle criticism and and you should seek out negative feedback, critical feedback alongside, you know, affirming feedback. And so, yeah, I think conviction comes from you know hearing both sides of of the argument. And the more you can go get that, the the better off you'll be. Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

All right, very good. Well, listen, great stuff, Brady. Um, really had a fun conversation. I was looking forward to it. Yeah, me too. I appreciate you taking the time. I enjoyed um, you know, getting to meet you a few years ago and keeping up with Bro Throw and telling that story, and and it'll be fun to see where this next chapter, you know, leads for you, not just for you personally with discerning, but also, you know, to see where Bro Throw goes from here. And hopefully at some point, um, we'll get you back to Conway. We'll get you on campus at the College of Business uh get some of your experiences and insights with some of our students. I know Dean Bisping would love that, and and uh I would love that too. Yeah, hopefully this fall. I'm looking forward to it. All right, great stuff. All right, we appreciate you tuning in for this episode of Central to NWA. Until next time, go bears. That's it for this episode of Central to NWA, a UCA podcast. I'm Paul Gatling, Senior Director of Northwest Arkansas Engagement for the University of Central Arkansas. Be sure to subscribe to the show and follow UCA on all the appropriate social media. I'll see you next time on Central to NWA.