Read 6 key slides from a pitch deck that a startup trying to bring elements of TikTok to sports betting used to land $1 million in seed funding

• Sports and gaming startup Kero Sports has closed $1 million in seed funding.
• Its founder shared with Insider 6 key slides from its investor pitch deck.
• The startup thinks sports-betting platforms need to be as entertaining as TikTok to reach more fans.

Kero Sports, a startup that powers gaming experiences inside the apps of professional sports teams, has closed its first $1 million in seed funding, the company told Insider exclusively.

The startup has attracted some prominent investors in the early-stage sports gambling and online gaming arenas, including Acies Investments, Lloyd Danzig's Sharp Alpha Fund, David Sargeant's iGaming Ideas, and more.

Founder and CEO Tomash Devenishek shared with Insider six key slides from the pitch deck that helped it raise the round.

The company, which used to be called Rush Sports, mainly operates a free-to-play gaming experience that uses algorithms to generate bets every 30 seconds or so on the action in game (as shown in the deck below).

It's trying to emulate the always-on interactive nature of TikTok or Instagram with frequent wagers that users can swipe to bet on and that resolve in minutes as the game unfolds. (A bet could ask, "Which player hits the next 3?" during a basketball game, for example.) There's also a social component in which users can comment on the action.

Devenishek told Insider that he often referenced in pitch meetings a tweet that he saw when TikTok first started booming. It said something along the lines of, "Congrats, we went from a product that took three seconds of brain power," in reference to Google, "to one that takes zero."

"Most technology that is seeing rapid adoption requires less and less effort from consumers to adopt them," Devenishek said. "That's what we try and mimic."

Devenishek said he also liked to open presentations with an image of fans sitting in the stands of a game, glued to their smartphones, to show that for younger generations, "Sports is consumed with a phone in hand." (The image is not included in the version published below because Insider not have the rights to publish it.)

Kero primarily licenses its white-label product to NBA, NFL, and other sports teams to gamify their apps, the company said. It plans to expand later this year with a version where users will be able to put real money on the line, which will be tailored for sports-betting platforms.

Devenishek said he was often asked in pitch meetings whether he planned to take the product direct-to-consumer. He said the question typically came from Silicon Valley investors who weren't as familiar with the hyper-competitive US sports-betting landscape, and viewed DTC as the best path to scale.

But Devenishek said he doesn't want to compete with the DraftKings and FanDuels. He'd rather be a supplier to them, and others in the sports gambling space.

The strategy also speaks to another common question Devenishek said he fielded in pitch meetings: "What's your exit strategy?"

Kero wants to expand to support as many sports as possible and attract casual sports fans, which it believes can help grow the audience for sports betting and make it attractive to any number of acquirers.  

Devenishek said there were many versions of the pitch deck, and that no two investors likely saw the same presentation. The full version, which was viewed by Insider, included 12 slides, several of which were removed by the company in the version published below because they user, revenue, client, and other sensitive information.

Here are the six key slides from the deck: