A few key highlights:

2019: Invest in the root if you want the fruit.

2019 Strategic Priorities Deliver our Core Product Value Widen our Moat Operate as Owners Invest in the Future Be a Force for Good

2019 OKRs Make Snapchat the Fastest Way to Communicate Find Best Friends for all Snapchatters Achieve Full Year Profitability Lead the Way in Augmented Reality Spread Positivity

What do you guys think of this?

It's the first of many. Companies have been circling for years, prepping for access to the US market.

I'm surprised it's not in the billions, to be honest.

Why? They don't have some special access to gambling that others don't and are known for losing phenomenal amounts of money.

this is really cool....just went to Iceland and was looking for something that solves what you're talking about

Thank you for your feedback! What is the next city you are travelling to? We will add it to the app by that time ;)

Can you guys do this for Firefly too? i'm going to that one and would love to use it!

Hey Dan!

As a fellow bot game creator, this is really cool.

what's your plan for monetization?

Thanks!

Do you guys feel like your product could replace mail merges?

69% is a huge number in terms of sports betting. Typically to be profitable you need to be in the 52% - 56% arena to be profitable, so this is significantly profitable

This is actually really interesting when you're dealing with large pools.

Last year, I was in a pool with 10,000+ people and serious $ were on the line and I actively negotiated with other brackets to buy them, split ownership, etc.

A few questions/comments: - Would you also be able to sell a % of the bracket rather than just all of it? - Would you also build out tools to predict the current odds of the entries?

Technically the bracket could be owned by another contract rather than a normal account so in theory at least it's possible.

^^ this. The base contract allows only a single owner at a time, but you can end up with some pretty exotic ownership structures if you want ...

That makes sense - cool idea and definitely see the value if and when sports gaming becomes legalized...

Hi Hacker News! We're Sweep: guess March Madness results and win Amazon gift cards - all through a bot. We've been working on building this product for the last few months out of WeWork's Area 51 accelerator in NYC.

We're working on building sports games for the non-Whale, starting with a FB Messenger chatbot, which you can check out here: https://www.playsweep.com

I worked at FanDuel and quickly discovered that the business is really optimized for the whales (which isn’t a surprise), as are most gaming businesses. This creates a system that’s incentivized to drive satisfaction for a very small % of the user base.

Ryan taught himself how to code - and custom built Sweep, no use of any out-of-the-box solutions. It’s been a labor of love.

Our first product is completely free and our primary goal is to build a truly fun and engaging experience before sports gaming is legalized in the US.

This is the first step in a plan to change the way that people interact and engage with sports.

We’re really here because we want feedback and ideas from HN on how to improve. We know there are bot and AI experts here (we’re not currently an AI-based product) and we’d also be really interested in hearing about your experiences and how we could apply some of those concepts to improve Sweep.

Awesome. Congrats on the launch. If you're giving away all these Amazon gift cards, how are you making money?

Thanks for the question!

We're not making $ right now. Our goal is to learn what users want from a game standpoint before monetizing.

Eventually, we'll look to monetize through in-app virtual goods or tangential products focused on sports betting in the US market, should it be legalized (lots of movement right now in New Jersey)

I could see someone like a Postmates making an investment in building one of these types of products