Joey Levy

On the DealMakers podcast he said that he moved to New York at 18 to attend Columbia University; he had wanted an Ivy LeagueIvy LeagueThe Ivy League is an intercollegiate athletic conference comprising eight universities in the northeastern United States: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. It was formally established in 1954, with league competition beginning in the 1956–57 academic year. Its athletic framework emphasizes student status, academic standards, and financial aid based on need. The name is also commonly used collectively for the eight member institutions.Open the full entry school because, as he put it, the one common denominator he saw among successful people was that “a lot of them went to ivy league school.”⁠[1]

He majored in history, with a focus, by his own account, on nineteenth-century American history, a subject he chose because “I was good at history.” A FOX Sports story of October 2015 noted that only a few months earlier he had been quietly studying history at Columbia.⁠[1][2]

He said that he made the Dean’s List early on, that his grades fell in his sophomore year, and that he once missed a final examination because of a meeting with an investor.⁠[1][3]

In his 2022 essay “Introducing Betr” he wrote that he first saw the marketing of FanDuel and DraftKings when he started college in 2013 and thought daily fantasy sports “the best idea ever.”⁠[4]

The FOX Sports story relates that in January 2015 he and fellow students Joshua Hughes and Jessica Vandebon put a prototype online and asked people on RedditRedditReddit is an online platform that organizes content and discussion around interest-based communities, founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Users take part in communities by posting, commenting, and voting; its operating company, Reddit, Inc., listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2024.Open the full entry to test it; within 15 minutes a Reddit user asked how to invest, and that person eventually put in $20,000.⁠[2]

Rolling Out identified him as co-founder and chief executive, Joshua Hughes as co-founder and chief technology officer and Jessica Vandebon as co-founder and lead developer, all three of them undergraduates at Columbia University.⁠[5]

Rolling Out and Joe Favorito’s article both trace the idea to a telephone call from his uncle. In Rolling Out he said that his uncle called after using a competitor’s site because he needed directions for how to use it; in Joe Favorito’s article he said that the uncle, who plays season-long fantasy, called after seeing a competitor’s advertisement on television. In Rolling Out he observed that that competitor and one other were “spending tens of millions of dollars a quarter on marketing.”⁠[5][6]

Accounts of when Draftpot launched differ: FOX Sports dates the prototype to January 2015; on the DealMakers podcast he said an alpha and beta product went out in early 2015; Joe Favorito’s article of August 2015 states that Draftpot launched in mid-June 2015; the episode notes of The Betting Startups Podcast say he launched Draftpot in 2015; and his own 2022 essay says Draftpot launched in 2014.⁠[2][1][6][7][4]

In his 2022 essay he described Draftpot’s product as what he called the first dedicated daily fantasy format with no salary cap, aimed at casual fans.⁠[4]

Darren Heitner wrote in ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry on September 7, 2015 that in May of that year he was finishing his sophomore year at Columbia University while two friends were sitting their junior-year final examinations, and that the three were no longer enrolled at Columbia and were taking time off to pursue Draftpot. The article calls him a South FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry native and Draftpot’s chief executive; in his telling, there was too much upside for him and his colleagues to go back to school.⁠[8]

The same article states that his mother was at first not in favour of the move. In the FOX Sports story he said by telephone that he had promised his mother he would go back to school once the venture was over, and added that Columbia would readmit students who succeed: “Right now, we’re all just taking time off to do this.”⁠[8][2]

On the DealMakers podcast he said that when he dropped out his parents “thought I was a moron.”⁠[1]

Sources differ on his year of study and his age when he left: Forbes has him finishing his sophomore year; Joe Favorito’s article of August 2015 calls him a 20-year-old Columbia University freshman who would take a gap year; Florida Trend wrote in 2023 that he dropped out of Columbia University at 19; and he himself wrote in August 2022 that he had dropped out “8 years ago.”⁠[8][6][9][4]

The website of the sports-marketing consultant Joe Favorito published an article on Draftpot on August 10, 2015. It quotes him describing two types of game for hardcore and casual fans, large guaranteed prize pools, lower rakes and deposit bonuses, and states that guaranteed prize pools for the first week of the NFLNFLThe NFL (National Football League) is a U.S. professional American football league of 32 clubs. Founded in 1920 as the APFA and renamed in 1922, it is organized into the AFC and NFC, with the season culminating in the Super Bowl.Open the full entry season already stood at $150,000.⁠[6]

The article adds that Draftpot had a user chat during contests, that he spoke of one tournament in which more than 600 participants were talking together, that the company marketed itself mainly through social media and referrals from early users, that a campus-representative programme had brought hundreds of college students onto the platform, and that it planned to add fantasy college football that month and college basketball around October.⁠[6]

In the article he said: “I’m taking some time off of school to focus solely on Draftpot,” and noted that his partner, also a Columbia student, oversaw web development. His aim was to acquire users quickly so as to offer larger guaranteed prize pools and to be a prominent competitor by the start of the next football season. His advice to student entrepreneurs was that a venture of this kind requires a full-time commitment and cannot be done on the side.⁠[6]

Forbes wrote on September 7, 2015 that Draftpot had recently raised $2.2 million for user acquisition and global expansion and sought to rival FanDuel and DraftKings. FOX Sports noted that the money came mostly from angel investors.⁠[8][2]

In the Forbes article he said that Draftpot had also received an investment from Dorm Room Fund, which is backed by First Round CapitalFirst Round CapitalVenture capital firm.Open the full entry; the article notes that a Reddit user became the company’s first investor. He called the absence of a salary cap the product’s biggest differentiation: in Fan Mode users could pick any player, while GM Mode applied a cap based on players’ points per game. The rake was at most 10 percent, with many contests at about 8 percent, and Draftpot had more than 5,000 users and had paid out roughly $120,000 in prizes in August alone.⁠[8]

Two other figures have been given for the company’s funding: on the DealMakers podcast he called it an “immaterial $2,000,000 seed round,” and Boom Fantasy’s 2017 press release described Draftpot as “a company that had raised $3 million in funding.”⁠[1][10]

Rolling Out wrote that Draftpot covered a wide range of sports as well as eSports and called it the first daily fantasy platform to host traditional-sports and eSports contests on the same platform; the company claimed that its user base had grown by more than 20 percent a week since the NFL season began and that it would pay out more than $250,000 for the third week of the NFL season.⁠[5]

A FOX Sports story published on October 1, 2015 described Draftpot’s worldwide headquarters as a bedroom in a New York apartment a few blocks from Columbia University, where he and his two co-founders also lived. He called the arrangement “very convenient and very cost effective.”⁠[2]

In the story he said that Draftpot paid out $220,000 in prizes on its first football weekend and was well on its way to paying out a million dollars by the end of December; the company took a rake of 8 to 10 percent and had 7,200 registered users. He argued that the absence of a salary cap levelled the field for casual players, remarked that the $220,000 paid out in the first week had not gone to just five people, and believed Draftpot had a chance to become one of the top five or six sites once the industry shook out. Of the older format he said: “Casual players will consistently lose money in that system.”⁠[2]

A report by Andrew Branch in WORLD magazine called him a 20-year-old entrepreneur, described the Draftpot platform as less than two months old with more than 7,000 users, and quoted him as saying: “We are very new, but we’ve already paid out over $2 million.” That payout figure differs from the figures given in the FOX Sports story.⁠[11]

The WORLD report notes that after the scandal in the industry Draftpot and other sites quickly barred employees from playing on any site; he said: “We now need to operate like, you know, companies that are part of a billion-dollar industry.” Of possible government involvement he said: “On the contrary, regulation would simply validate the industry.”⁠[11]

Looking back on the DealMakers podcast, he said that ahead of the 2015 football season the company had been “way more aggressive than we should have been” with its customer-acquisition budget and had raised too little to pay for its growth plan; in October 2015 the industry was hit by an insider-trading scandal involving a DraftKings employee who played on FanDuel, cease-and-desist letters followed, and the New York attorney general at the time, Eric Schneiderman, in his words, led a “weird crusade” against daily fantasy sports.⁠[1][3]

Legal Sports Report wrote in 2017 that Draftpot stopped offering contests in 2016.⁠[12]

The Thiel Foundation announced the 2016 class of the Thiel Fellowship on June 21, 2016, and he was on the list. The list places his project, Quizr, under Sports Gaming, notes that he had earlier founded Draftpot, and gives New York as his location.⁠[13]

Florida Trend wrote in 2023 that he received a Thiel Fellowship in 2016, a programme that the investor Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry founded in 2011 for young innovators who skip or leave college.⁠[9]

In his 2022 essay he wrote that he first came across traditional sports betting while building Draftpot, at a time when it was legal in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry only in Las Vegas and otherwise available through offshore books; he wrote that the experience was “like interacting with a foreign language” and that he had to search online to learn how to place a bet.⁠[4]

He wrote that he wanted to start on the problem in 2016 or early 2017, but that sports betting was not yet legal in the United States, so he moved to Eastern Europe to work with an existing business and test a redesigned betting experience. On the DealMakers podcast he likewise said that Simplebet began as a project in Eastern Europe.⁠[4][1]

On May 31, 2017 Boom Fantasy announced a $2 million seed round led by Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry and the acquisition of the primary assets of Draftpot. The release said that the acquisition would double Boom Fantasy’s user base and that Boom Fantasy had also acquired Draftpot’s intellectual property, including its technology and gameplay.⁠[10][14]

TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry described the deal as mainly a way for Boom Fantasy to gain users, with Draftpot users’ balances and accounts moving to Boom Fantasy; it gave no price. Legal Sports Report referred to Draftpot as a “former DFS operator.”⁠[14][12]

His biography on the DealMakers site says that Draftpot was acquired in 2017; on the programme he said the company was exited in a way that “wasn’t like a you know super positive financial outcome.” In his 2022 essay he wrote that Draftpot was less successful than hoped but that the feedback it received supported his core idea, and the episode notes of The Betting Startups Podcast quote him calling it “an incredible learning experience.”⁠[1][4][7]

In his 2022 essay he wrote that he concluded a venture-backed business based in the United States would stand a better chance, returned to the country in early 2018 and re-formed the business as Simplebet with Chris Bevilacqua and Scott Marshall, who, he wrote, took a chance on a 22-year-old. On the DealMakers podcast he said the company was incorporated in New York in April 2018.⁠[4][1]

Florida Trend wrote that he launched Simplebet in 2018 with his $100,000 Thiel Fellowship grant.⁠[9]

Six weeks after SimpleBet Inc. was incorporated, the Supreme Court of the United StatesSupreme Court of the United StatesThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court of the U.S. federal judiciary. Established under the Constitution and the Judiciary Act of 1789, it has consisted since 1869 of a Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices and sits in Washington, D.C.Open the full entry struck down PASPA, the federal law prohibiting sports betting, leaving the states free to legalize it.⁠[4][9]

He wrote that Simplebet’s initial aim was to simplify the betting experience as a direct-to-consumer operator while staying open to a business-to-business model; the company then concentrated on American sports, found that no one had built the infrastructure for micro-betting at scale on those sports, and chose to license its technology to other betting operators so as to focus on product and technology.⁠[4]

Florida Trend explained micro-betting as wagering on single moments in a game rather than on the final score, and wrote that Simplebet used artificial intelligence to build an automated platform offering real-time bets with fast-changing odds, which it licensed to sportsbook operators including DraftKings and bet365. In his words: “It was very challenging to figure out exactly how to do this.”⁠[9]

The DealMakers episode page lists GoodPaper Ventures, Sachse Family Fund, FJ Labs and Grit Capital Partners among Simplebet’s investors; Refresh Miami wrote in May 2021 that Simplebet had raised $50 million in venture capital. His biography on the DealMakers site calls him a co-founder and board member of Simplebet.⁠[1][15]

Refresh Miami wrote in 2021 that while building Simplebet in New York City he bought a small place in Miami so that he could visit family; he said, “I immediately fell in love with Miami,” and added that he had been saying since 2017 that Miami should become a technology hub.⁠[15]

The article states that he moved back to Miami full-time in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic; Zaid Rahman arrived in October, and together they started The305, a group that held small dinners and networking events and grew to more than 1,000 people.⁠[15]

On May 16, 2021 Refresh Miami profiled 305 Ventures, an early-stage fund run by founders who invest in other founders with a presence in Miami. Its partners were Levy; Zaid Rahman, founder and chief executive of Flexbase; Kingsley Advani, founder and chief executive of Allocations; and Michael Melikian, an investor in 16 companies. The partners had moved to Miami from CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry or New York and had begun working together the previous year.⁠[15]

The article gives the fund’s size as $5 million, with cheques of $25,000 to $100,000 and a plan to back 40 companies; it had invested in 10 startups in the preceding months, had three more close to completion and was already planning a second fund. Its investments included Vinovest and Los Dos Tequila, a beverage brand led by Jeremy Levine.⁠[15]

The venture firm Florida Funders had invested in Simplebet’s most recent round and, on learning of 305 Ventures, invested in it as a limited partner; 305 Ventures was to identify startups in the Miami area and introduce them to Florida Funders. He said, “Florida Funders and other VCs are starting to see 305 Ventures as almost like a scout feeder,” and predicted that Miami “is going to lead the pack.”⁠[15]

His biography on the DealMakers site calls him co-founder and general partner of 305 Ventures and an angel investor in startups; on the programme the host, Alejandro Cremades, put the fund at about $15 million.⁠[1]

On August 8, 2022 he and Jake Paul announced Betr, a micro-betting and media company, with Levy as chief executive and Jake Paul as president; the company is headquartered in Miami.⁠[16][17]

The company disclosed $50 million of funding at the same time: Refresh Miami wrote that it comprised a $30 million Series A led by Florida Funders earlier in the year and a $20 million Series A1 led by the Miami firms Aliya Capital Partners and Fuel Venture Capital. Covers noted that Florida Funders invested an initial tranche of $5 million in the $30 million first round.⁠[18][16][19]

Investors named in the coverage include 8VC, FinSight Ventures, 305 Ventures, Tampa Bay Ventures, co-owners of the San Francisco 49ersSan Francisco 49ersThe San Francisco 49ers are a professional American football team that began play in 1946 and now competes in the NFL’s NFC West. Originally an AAFC member, the team joined the NFL in 1950 and won five Super Bowls under Bill Walsh and George Seifert. Its home is Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. Kyle Shanahan has coached the team since 2017, and Jed York is its principal owner.Open the full entry, Boston CelticsBoston CelticsThe Boston Celtics are a professional basketball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, competing in the NBA’s Eastern Conference Atlantic Division and playing at TD Garden. Founded in 1946, they were one of the Basketball Association of America’s 11 inaugural teams. Their 18 NBA championships, most recently in 2024, are the league record. An investment group led by Bill Chisholm has owned the team since August 2025.Open the full entry and Miami MarlinsMiami MarlinsThe Miami Marlins are a professional baseball team in Miami, United States, playing at loanDepot park.Open the full entry, and Travis Scott, Ezekiel Elliott, Dez Bryant, Richard Sherman, DeSean Jackson and Braxton Berrios. Front Office Sports wrote that Jake Paul’s Anti FundAnti FundAnti Fund is an investment firm co-founded in 2021 by Jake Paul and Geoff Woo, investing from pre-seed and seed stages through growth-stage companies. The firm combines technical judgment with its founders’ experience in media and consumer brands, focusing on artificial intelligence, robotics, defense and related infrastructure.Open the full entry and Simplebet also took part in the Series A.⁠[19][18][17][20]

Covers quoted his remark to Bloomberg News that the money was a “$50-million war chest to get the company to profitability without having to raise more.” Covers also quoted his remark to AxiosAxiosAxios is a US digital news media company founded in 2016 by former Politico executives Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz and launched in January 2017. It is known for short news items and industry newsletters in the “Smart Brevity” style, especially for its Washington political coverage, and publishes local news newsletters in cities across the United States through Axios Local. Since 2022 it has been owned by Cox Enterprises.Open the full entry: “We view free-to-play as more of an interactive tutorial or glimpse into the future of fan engagement.”⁠[19]

That day he published the essay “Introducing Betr” on Medium. He wrote that four years after the federal ban was lifted the user experience of sports betting had not meaningfully changed, and that DraftKings had launched micro-betting powered by Simplebet but treated it as “a feature within a supermarket of legacy sports betting products vs as the core experience.” Betr, he wrote, was launching “the world’s first micro-betting focused app,” with the objective “to become the consumer company, product, and brand synonymous with micro-betting.”⁠[4][19]

The essay introduced the founding team: Alex Ursa, head of product, who had helped build FanDuel’s sports-betting and casino businesses; Mike Denevi, head of media, who had helped build Bleacher Report’s betting media brand; and Ashwin Krishnan, Jake Strasser, Bradley Gabel, Victor Pires, Caroline McDonald and Derek Sullivan. Most of them had moved to Miami. He closed by thanking Geoff WooGeoff WooGeoff Woo (Geoffrey Woo) is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist; he is a co-founder and managing partner of Anti Fund, a co-founder and executive chairman of Ketone-IQ and Archive, and a board member of W and Betr. He graduated from Stanford University in computer science, co-founded Glassmap, and later worked in nutrition products, marketing software, and venture capital.Open the full entry (written Geoffrey Woo in the essay), Nakisa Bidarian, Scott Marshall, Greg Elinsky, Chris Bevilacqua, Saxon Baum, Ryan Whittemore and Florida Funders, noting that Florida Funders had invested in Simplebet, 305 Ventures and Betr and that its investment leading Betr’s Series A was the largest in the firm’s history.⁠[4]

The Capitolist noted that he wrote on social media that Betr felt like the culmination of his life’s work to date. Saxon Baum of Florida Funders said the firm was backing him for the third time.⁠[17]

Refresh Miami wrote that, in his words, many executives had moved to Miami to build the company and that he wanted Betr to be the leading consumer-facing startup to come out of Florida; the article adds that the team then numbered 15 and that the company planned to hire locally.⁠[18]

On the DealMakers podcast he described how Betr came about and how its equity was divided: Betr was spun out of Simplebet to pursue the consumer product, Simplebet received 25 percent in exchange for a long-term licence to its technology at most-favoured-nation rates, and the remaining 75 percent was split evenly between himself, as founder and chief executive, and Jake Paul. He said the connection to Jake Paul came through a dinner in Miami at which he sat next to the partner who co-founded Anti Fund with Jake Paul (the transcript prints the name as “Jeff Wu”).⁠[1]

The Betr app went live in the Apple and Google PlayGoogle PlayGoogle Play is a digital content distribution service operated by Google, centered on the Google Play Store, the app store for Android devices. Its predecessor, Android Market, launched in October 2008 alongside the first Android phone, and in March 2012 it merged with Google Music and the Google eBookstore and was renamed Google Play. As the main distribution channel for Android apps, its commissions, billing rules, and review practices have drawn controversy, including the Epic Games antitrust lawsuit in the United States and penalties under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.Open the full entry stores on September 1, 2022, at first as a free-to-play product in which users wagered coins redeemable for prizes. He described the free version as a registration and onboarding platform combined with an interactive tutorial for the future of sports betting, and called it an initial version that would get considerably better over time.⁠[21][20]

Casino.org wrote on October 23, 2022 that at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) he announced that Betr would not accept wagers made with credit cards and would set limits for bettors under 25; he spoke with the site at Resorts World Las Vegas earlier that month, a couple of days after the announcement.⁠[22]

In the interview he said Betr aimed to be “the category-defining consumer company in this space” and likened its potential effect to that of Robinhood on day trading; he estimated that FanDuel and DraftKings had about 3 million active users out of roughly 150 million American sports fans and that the country could have 10 to 30 million sports bettors. The company, he said, was in the final stages with its payments partner ahead of a planned January 1 launch in OhioOhioOhio is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital is Columbus. It joined the Union in 1803 as the 17th state, the first carved from the Northwest Territory, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 11,799,448.Open the full entry, with deposits likely to be made by direct bank transfer and debit card.⁠[22]

Florida Trend later wrote that Betr was the first mobile sports-betting operator in the United States to ban credit-card deposits voluntarily, that it set deposit limits for bettors aged 21 to 25, and that it offered time limits and “cool off” periods.⁠[9]

Betr’s real-money app launched in Ohio, its first state, on January 1, 2023. Florida Trend wrote that he acknowledged bugs in the early days and said: “Perfect is the enemy of good enough.”⁠[9][23]

The notes of episode 54 of The Betting Startups Podcast, released on January 4, 2023, say that he described a culture at Betr that allowed a 20-person team to be a day-one operator in a major state, ahead of much larger companies.⁠[7]

On April 13, 2023 Legal Sports Report published a question-and-answer interview with him by Sam McQuillan. Building a sportsbook, he said, starts with the front-end consumer experience, and Betr offers “intuitive, multiple-choice questions” rather than a spreadsheet of numbers; his order of work was consumer experience, product design, betting engine and then player account management.⁠[23]

He said that about 20 percent of Betr’s media audience in Ohio had become real-money users within a few months and that customer-acquisition cost, though not yet zero, was running at “unprecedentedly low rates”; 50 percent of users had bet at least 10 times and 15 percent at least 50 times. He added that the combined promotional spending of FanDuel and DraftKings in Ohio in January 2023 alone, excluding paid media, was more than three times all the equity financing he had raised to date.⁠[23]

He said Betr would introduce its own versions of moneylines, point spreads, over/unders, player props and parlays over the following weeks and months, so that any bet available on FanDuel would also be available on Betr; the company intended to prove its model over about 18 months and then raise a few hundred million dollars, and he remarked: “I’m in no rush.” He wanted himself and Jake Paul still to own a substantial stake at any public offering, and expected Betr to become profitable before many competitors, possibly in the first half of 2025.⁠[23]

On June 27, 2023 Betr announced a $35 million Series A2 at a pre-money valuation of $300 million. Benzinga wrote that the round was led by Roger EhrenbergRoger EhrenbergRoger Ehrenberg is an American venture capitalist who founded the early-stage investment firm IA Ventures, led the seed round of Wise, and is now managing partner of Eberg Capital, an investment firm focused on sports.Open the full entry, through IA Sports Ventures and Eberg Capital, and by Fuel Venture Capital; both co-founders invested, Levy personally and Jake Paul through Anti Fund, alongside the existing investors FinSight Ventures, Florida Funders and Aliya Capital Partners.⁠[24]

He called Roger Ehrenberg “one of the most successful venture investors of the past two decades.” The article notes that Betr Gaming was then live in Ohio and MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry with a launch in VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry planned, and that Betr had acquired the Chameleon platform from FansUnite.⁠[24]

Florida Trend published the profile “Upping the Ante” on July 11, 2023, describing him as the 28-year-old chief executive and co-founder of Miami-based Betr.⁠[9]

The profile describes Betr as employing several dozen people in a new 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Miami, half of it given to the gaming unit and business operations and the other half to Jake Paul’s team, with a content studio with podcast and production facilities, a boxing ring and a gym. Jake Paul runs Betr’s media arm; Levy called him a marketing genius and said: “We’re building an entire media company to get brand awareness.”⁠[9]

He said Betr had “crushed” its forecasts for revenue and customer acquisition; the company entered Massachusetts in May 2023, with Virginia likely next, and its free-to-play app was available nationwide. That spring Betr began offering some bets on game outcomes, and he envisaged eventually offering every option the incumbents provide: “Jake and I and the team here are not going to stop until we win.”⁠[9]

The profile adds that his Betr is unrelated to an Australian sportsbook of the same name, launched in 2022 by Matt Tripp with backing from News Corp; it relates that in an interview with Casino.org the previous year he was aware of that company but not worried by it, because his company had been the first to file for a trademark in the United States and in relevant overseas markets.⁠[9]

On August 28, 2024 DraftKings announced an agreement to acquire Simplebet, saying it would fold Simplebet’s proprietary live-betting technology into its own platform. Covers described Simplebet as founded in 2018 and based in New York, with DraftKings, bet365 and Caesars among its clients and Chris Bevilacqua as co-founder and chief executive.⁠[25][26]

Legal Sports Report wrote that the terms were not announced and that Jordan Bender, an analyst at JMP Securities, valued the deal at up to $195 million with $70 million paid up front; DraftKings had worked with Simplebet since August 2021. The article calls him a founder of both Simplebet and Betr and adds that he had announced the week before that Betr had acquired a licence for Huddle Tech technology.⁠[27]

Covers wrote on May 20, 2026 that Betr had acquired Ascent Capital Management, an introducing broker registered with the NFA and the CFTCCommodity Futures Trading CommissionThe U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an independent federal agency created by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974 and operating since 1975 to regulate futures, options and swaps markets; it has treated bitcoin and other virtual currencies as commodities since 2015 and has been chaired since December 22, 2025 by Michael Selig.Open the full entry, on undisclosed terms; Betr had applied for NFA membership in October 2025 and bought the firm after waiting about seven months. Betr had announced a multi-year partnership with PolymarketPolymarketPolymarket is a prediction market platform founded by Shayne Coplan in 2020, on which users buy and sell shares in the outcomes of political, sports, financial, cultural, and other events, with trading prices regarded as the market’s estimate of the probability that an event will occur. It rose to prominence during the 2024 US election, returned to the US market in 2025 by acquiring a licensed exchange and clearinghouse, and received a major investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, while facing gambling-regulation and insider-trading scrutiny in US states and several countries.Open the full entry in March and planned to offer event contracts on sports, politics, culture and other subjects in its app that year.⁠[28]

Speaking as Betr’s co-founder and chief executive, he said: “Prediction markets represent one of the most exciting evolutions in interactive entertainment and financial technology,” and called the acquisition “another step toward our vision of creating the first true nationwide real-money gaming app.”⁠[28]

The same article notes that Betr had previously held sportsbook licences in Massachusetts and Virginia but left regulated sports betting to concentrate on other products.⁠[28]

NEXT.io wrote on July 2, 2026 that Betr had promoted Alex Ursa to chief operating officer, Alex Kuwada to chief marketing officer and Mike Denevi to chief content officer; Alex Ursa, Betr’s first hire, had been head of gaming for almost four years; Alex Kuwada joined as head of marketing in July 2024; and Mike Denevi, the second hire, joined in April 2022 and had been head of media for more than four years. The article identifies Levy as Betr’s founder and chief executive; he said, “We would not be where we are today without these three executives,” and that he was thrilled to continue building Betr with them into a “category defining business.”⁠[29]

A RotoWire article updated on October 27, 2026 relates that he spoke with the reporter Bill Speros in the lobby of a boutique hotel at Hudson Yards in New York the day after appearing on a panel at the NextPredict conference. He believed sports would go on accounting for most prediction-market activity so long as the courts or Congress keep sports event contracts legal: “It’s wishful thinking to think that sports won’t continue to be the vast majority.”⁠[30]

He said Betr held “the most hedged position in the category,” built to do well whether or not the courts permit sports contracts, and that anyone highly confident about how legality will turn out across jurisdictions “is at least a little bit full of it, because nobody knows.” The industry, he said, had never been in “a more dynamic and chaotic regulatory environment,” and Betr’s answer over the past year had been its Super App: “Customers don’t want to have 10 different apps.”⁠[30]

The article notes that with Betr Rips, a digital rips product due to launch in all 50 states over the following weeks, Betr would have launched five products in about 15 months; he said, “Our product velocity is the best in the category,” and that revenue was growing at triple-digit rates year over year. He described Betr Rips as e-commerce, comparing it to buying and trading cards at a hobby store as a child, and expected digital rips to be “a major growth engine.” He did not rule out a return to licensed sports betting in states where Betr used to operate should the courts send sports wagering back to the states: “anything could be on the table.”⁠[30]

Betr’s advertisement for the start of the NFL season, featuring Jeremy Piven and Adrian Grenier, drew a cease-and-desist letter from HBO; he declined to discuss legal matters but defended the advertisement—“It was a great ad”—and said it used no HBO intellectual property and that the actors played themselves: “They don’t own the concept of a Miami house party.”⁠[30]

Of the relationship that his co-founder Jake Paul has with President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpDonald Trump (born 1946) is an American politician and businessman, a Republican who ran the real estate company the Trump Organization and starred in the television series The Apprentice. He served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and has been the 47th president since 2025.Open the full entry, he said Jake Paul “has every right to do what he wants to do.” Of their division of labour he said, “We’ve stayed in our lanes, and it’s worked really well,” with Jake Paul leading the brand and Levy running the business. The article notes that Betr was four years old and that its Super App had been live for less than a year; he planned to “invest very significantly” in that first-mover advantage.⁠[30]

He was born and raised in Broward County, Florida, which he described on the DealMakers podcast as just north of Miami.⁠[15][1][3]

Ages given in the coverage: articles of August to October 2015 and the WORLD magazine report call him 20; in his 2022 essay he wrote that he was 19 when he first started Draftpot and 22 when his two Simplebet co-founders joined him; Florida Trend gave his age as 28 in July 2023.⁠[6][5][2][11][4][9]

On the DealMakers podcast he said that his grandfather was a businessman, “very entrepreneurial,” and an inspiration to him. He said he “didn’t come from a lot of money” and began working at about 14 or 15, running a tutoring business, working in a sandwich shop and taking assorted gigs, because he wanted independence and an income and did not want to be “beholden to anybody.”⁠[1][3]

His favourite hobby as a child, he said, was season-long fantasy sports.⁠[1]

His biography on the DealMakers site also states that he was chief operating officer of Blue and White Publishing Inc.⁠[1]

On the DealMakers podcast he said that he was basically back at home; asked what advice he would give his younger self, he spoke of being smart enough to identify opportunities, humble enough to admit mistakes and determined enough never to give up.⁠[1]

He was a guest on the DealMakers podcast hosted by Alejandro Cremades, whose site carries an article and a transcript of the conversation; on the programme he said that he had recently reflected on the fifth anniversary of Simplebet, that the company had been formally incorporated about five years earlier, and that the anniversary of the repeal of PASPA had passed about ten days before.⁠[1][3]

On January 4, 2023 The Betting Startups Podcast released episode 54, “Joey Levy, Betr”; its notes call him the founder and chief executive of Betr and say he discussed Draftpot, Simplebet’s shift from a consumer operator to a business-to-business supplier, the partnership with Jake Paul on Betr, the co-founding of 305 Ventures and his advice to founders raising capital.⁠[7]

On August 1, 2023 Profluence Sports released podcast episode 60, “Joey Levy – CEO, Co-Founder Betr”; its notes say he had worked in fantasy sports and sports betting since 2014, beginning while he was at Columbia University, and its chapters cover becoming a founder at 19, combining media with micro-betting and a five-year vision for Betr.⁠[31]

X: Public account: https://x.com/joeyslevy (opens in a new window).⁠[7][1]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joey-levy-5b4b00a0/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[32]

305 Ventures: Official website: https://www.305.ventures/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

Betr: Official website: https://www.betr.app/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]