Nick M.

The through-line

Nick M.'s consistent argument is that sports betting products have barely changed while the games themselves never repeat: "Every game is different. Every game tells a different story, but the betting markets on all of them are the same no matter what the sport is" [1]. Everything he is building at SpeedLabs follows from that gap, and from an unusual path through it, from high school and college bookmaking to pricing for offshore books, to venture investing at 21, to running a company that was handed to him as "a bank account with $1,000 and zero employees" in November [1]. He is candid that none of this is a template: "I wouldn't say anything I've done is, you know, normal relative to most people my age, but, you know, got lucky here and there" [1], and on writing personal cheques of "anywhere from 25 to 200,000 out of my own pocket" at 21, "I don't advise that for most 21-year-olds, but it ended up working out" [1].

On momentum markets and why micro bets miss the point

The core product is what he calls momentum markets: live in-game markets where "our models are watching the games and identifying certain narratives, storylines, outliers that are actually happening, pricing those in real time and creating a, you know, market around that" [1]. His worked example comes from Super Bowl simulations, where Stefon Diggs had no catches in the first half and the model's first second-half market was whether Diggs gets five yards in the next five minutes [1]. He draws a hard line against micro betting: "even the traditional micro markets and micro bets, those are all determined before the game starts," while "no game that we're running markets on will ever have the same markets because no game is ever the same" [1]. He has no appetite for next-action wagering, dismissing "is the next play going to be a pass or a run. Is the next pitch going to be 95 or 98 mph" as "not very interesting," and adds a regulatory reason as well, since "the CFTC would shoot that down fairly quickly" [1]. Instead the markets resolve over configurable windows, five, ten or fifteen minutes, chosen by the operating partner: "Do you want five minute markets? If no, because you don't like the optics of that, cool, we'll give you 15" [1].

On the technology under the markets

The pricing model came out of his own trading and market-making work rather than from sportsbook practice: "we were pricing the next five to 10 minutes of the game using these, you know, momentum models and the flow of what we're watching" [1]. That suits venues where a position can be entered and exited without paying vig, and he is blunt that the incumbent alternative is worse for the customer: "everyone knows DraftKings live cash out option is not the true value of what it should be worth" [1]. On top of the model sits a layer drawn from writing on "the narrative of betting markets, the psychology of a gambler, what they like to see," organised into roughly twenty narrative regimes such as a player heating up, a player injured, a team catching fire, a team going cold [1]. AI does the wording rather than the pricing, "crafting these the wording around the markets," which is also where the tone can be tuned: "if we want to rage bait someone you know we could say LeBron's clearly not the GOAT does he even get 10 points in X amount of minutes" [1]. He contrasts this with legacy presentation, "money line over under and then prices that no one knows what they mean," and notes prediction market rails allow percentages, cents or odds, making it "a lot more versatile of a product than traditional OSP" [1].

On why prediction markets adopt faster than sportsbooks

Both sportsbooks and prediction markets are viable customers, but he expects very different clock speeds: "I think prediction markets are going to be faster to adapt this just given they're more innovative. They're not so latigious and corporate like the DraftKings and FanDuels of the world are" [1]. The friction on the sportsbook side is internal risk ownership as much as culture: "Do they trust our prices? Are they going to want to price themselves?" [1]. He also expects an optics objection to short-duration in-game markets, and is unbothered by it: "our biggest obstacle might be a might be an optics thing, but I don't really think that's stopped anyone considering some of the products I've seen in the gambling space" [1]. He is bullish enough on the prediction market category to describe it as too big to fail despite continuing regulatory posturing [1].

On liquidity, and putting capital behind the prices

He does not intend to hide behind a data feed. Sportsbooks get price packages showing how SpeedLabs is pricing the markets, with no managed trading service attached [1]. For prediction markets, the company will backstop its own product: "if Kali says hey we want this tomorrow but none of our market makers know how to price it we actually have a trading arm of the company that will provide liquidity on top of our own markets" [1]. He frames that as "us putting our money where our mouth is," alongside partnerships with several of the larger market makers on those platforms who "put up the capital, we'll take your prices and we'll do a rev share on top of that" [1]. His conclusion is that distribution mechanics are not the constraint: "I don't think there's any shortage of, you know, how to make this work or ways to make this work" [1].

On who these markets are actually for

Asked whether professional traders will price momentum markets and squeeze recreational players, he answers with a challenge: "I invite any hedge fund or market maker to try to price these" [1]. The defence is structural rather than technical secrecy alone, since sharp modellers "don't have weeks and weeks to build their models around it" and "don't know what the questions are going to be," leaving them to model what they guess the questions will be and work outward from there [1]. Keeping the models "a black box" is an explicit goal [1]. He therefore sees this as "more of a truly recreational product of people who, you know, want to participate live in game," sized against a live-heavy market where he estimates "over 80% of all sports volume on these exchanges is live" [1]. A consumer product is also coming in the fall, which he describes as single game survivor pools and trivia HQ built around the same markets [1].

On hiring people smarter than himself

He treats his own limits as an operating principle: "one of my best qualities here has been hiring smarter people than myself. So, ideally, I'm the dumbest person in our company" [1]. The concrete case is selling into traditional sportsbooks, where he hired Max Bashelle out of gambling.com after eight years there to run that line of business, reasoning that "I understand what I don't know and I don't have those types of connections where a guy like Max who's, you know, been around for a while can pull some strings and get us on the phone with who we need to get on the phone with" [1]. He credits co-founder David Woodley similarly, as the source of the original idea and of introductions across the industry [1].

On raising money before there is a product

The $6.5 million seed closed without much of a build behind it: "we kind of came to them with without much of a product. We came with a team and a roadmap to execute what was an idea at the time" [1]. He describes the process as unusually smooth, with few calls needed because "a lot of people saw the vision, saw the light at the end of the tunnel," and believes investors responded to the same hiring instinct he prizes internally [1]. The cap table is all gaming-sector funds: Parlay Capital led, having led Prize Pix's seed and followed on every subsequent round; a former Prize Pix board member joined; Bullpen Capital came in as a legacy name that led FanDuel's first round, with Paul Martino on that board; and Betting Startups Capital made SpeedLabs its first investment out of a new fund [1]. His lead encouraged him to oversubscribe the round [1].

Takeaways

• Momentum markets differ from micro bets because micro markets "are all determined before the game starts," while SpeedLabs generates markets from what is actually happening, over five to fifteen minute windows chosen by the operating partner [1].
• He refuses next-play markets on both product and regulatory grounds, calling them uninteresting and noting "the CFTC would shoot that down fairly quickly" [1].
• The pricing engine comes from his own market-making strategies, layered with roughly twenty narrative regimes, with AI writing the market wording rather than setting the price [1].
• Expect prediction markets to integrate first, since sportsbooks are "so latigious and corporate" and carry internal risk-management questions about trusting third-party prices [1].
• SpeedLabs runs a trading arm to seed liquidity on its own markets and has rev-share partnerships with larger market makers, so adoption is not gated on a venue's existing pricing capability [1].
• He believes sharps cannot pre-model markets they cannot anticipate, keeping the product recreational, and cites over 80% of exchange sports volume being live [1].
• His stated management principle is to be "the dumbest person in our company," exemplified by hiring Max Bashelle from gambling.com to open sportsbook doors he cannot open himself [1].
• The $6.5 million seed was raised on team and roadmap alone, led by Parlay Capital, with Bullpen Capital and Betting Startups Capital participating [1].