How SoBet used financial insights to navigate the sports betting boom

After being outlawed for over two decades, sports betting came back to America in 2018.

It happened in May. The Supreme Court ruled that states could legalize it if they chose. New Jersey moved first. Others followed.

Social media erupted. Suddenly, there were people sharing betting insights on Twitter, Discord, and everywhere else. Everyone wanted to make a quick buck—either by betting, or by selling secrets.

In this chaos, a former military officer named Cooper Lycan saw an opportunity to bring transparency and order to the wild world of sports betting. He founded SoBet, a platform designed to bring creators and bettors in one place.

As SoBet grew, Cooper faced new challenges. Managing their financial model became increasingly complex. Communicating effectively with investors got harder too. Spreadsheets were no longer sufficient.

This is the story of how Cooper simplified finances to steer his company through a competitive and fast-growing industry.

From military to startup: Cooper’s story

Cooper grew up in Portland, Maine. He was always a huge sports fan.

In college, he got into fantasy sports. "I dove deep into it," he said. "Back then, DraftKings and FanDuel were VC-backed startups that were kind of in a gray area. Nobody knew if they were sports betting or not. But I was 18, so I could play."

He wasn’t just playing for fun. In his dorm room, Cooper was building models. Using what he’d learned in his systems engineering classes and YouTube, he tried to figure out smarter sports bets. He ran Monte Carlo simulations, playing out games thousands of times to predict outcomes. He used statistics to see how player performance, weather, or past game outcomes might affect results. He searched for edges, learning how betting worked, trying to win big.

By summer 2018, when sports betting became legal, Cooper was serving five years in the military. There, deployments and training left little room for doing his own research. So he began following creators on social media, looking for quick betting info.

He noticed problems in the system.

• For users, finding reliable info was hard. Creators were scattered across Twitter, Telegram, Discord, and Patreon. Everyone claimed they were winning; there was no way to verify their claims.
• For creators, high churn rates were a challenge. New bettors didn't understand you can't always win. When losing streaks inevitably happened, they would cancel subscriptions. This led to unstable income. And creators had to keep marketing themselves nonstop—to attract new subscribers and keep money coming in.

Cooper decided to build a platform to solve these issues. That’s how SoBet began.

The early days and initial success

"The idea was to put multiple creators on one platform," Cooper said. "Build something around the user experience. Make it transparent. Give maximum access to information."

He imagined a place where users could find all the betting insights they needed in one spot, with verified track records—like a paid Twitter for sports betting. It would have insights from multiple creators, and a leaderboard showing performance. For creators, it meant steady income without endless self-promotion. They could even offer VIP access to subscribers.

Finding the right team was crucial. Through AngelList [also a customer of Runway], Cooper met Ron Reeves, an experienced CTO who had founded and sold businesses. "Ron’s dad was a huge sports bettor," Cooper said. "It hit home for him." Ron became SoBet’s co-founder and CTO.

They launched a beta version in June 2022, just five days after Cooper left the military. "We got eight creators on board," Cooper said. "Our beta looked like a paid blog where people paid us $9.95 a month, and creators posted their picks and analysis."

It worked. Users signed up, and creators found stability. “We leveraged creators’ social communities to drive people to our platform,” Cooper said. “People paid and staying longer than on previous channels.” The theory was: put multiple people on one platform, sell it for less, and retain customers. Creators got a revenue split that gave them steady monthly income. And, instead of always chasing new subscribers, they had people sticking around for longer, building them a stable revenue base.

But as SoBet grew, new challenges appeared.

The challenges of scaling, and the need for a better tool

As SoBet grew, new challenges appeared.

Making strategic decisions became hard with their existing tools. "I built our financial model in Excel," Cooper said. "Anytime we wanted a new version, we had to make an entirely new document. At one point, I had five different versions. Some were more up-to-date than others. It just became a mess."

Cooper wanted clear, actionable levers to pull. Something that showed how specific decisions—like increasing marketing spend or cutting costs—would impact growth and performance.

“At the seed stage, that's the best way to communicate with investors,” Cooper said. “A lot of people use decks. Decks might get you in the door, but they don't show how you're thinking about your business. Nobody invests based on a pitch deck.”

To communicate effectively with investors, Cooper needed a better solution for financial modeling and planning. “I wanted to get an investor on the phone, show them something in 10-15 minutes, and help them fully understand the business—our key growth drivers, the specific levers we could pull to grow faster, and by how much.”

How Runway transformed planning

That's when Cooper discovered Runway. They’d been using another tool, but faced issues with data integration and display. “After three months—and setup shouldn't have taken that long—I just pulled the plug,” he said. “Then we engaged with Runway, and were set up within a month. We could’ve gone faster, but we had other stuff going on."

With Runway, Cooper could model different scenarios and see their impact instantly. “Having a model you can manipulate, and then seeing how that manipulation affects other financial statements—your income statement, your balance sheet, your key metrics like cash—and just seeing that projection is probably the biggest use we’ve had for Runway.”

Runway allowed Cooper to consolidate all financial data in one place, eliminating the chaos of multiple spreadsheets. He could adjust variables and immediately see the outcomes, making strategic planning much more efficient.

Improving investor communication

Investor updates became less of a headache too. "Before, I used to build updates in Google Docs and send them via DocSend. Now, everything everything lives in one place. I can create dynamic reports for investors directly in Runway,” Cooper said.

“One of the most critical factors in building SoBet has been communicating with investors pretty constantly—even when nobody seems to care. In my opinion, that’s how you make people care: you just keep showing up.”

Now, every month, Cooper shares key metrics, along with “what I think is good, what I think might be concerning, where we’re going, what’s new, and some notes from me to add a bit of narrative."

Investors who’ve seen Cooper’s updates love them. “They're like, 'This is incredible.'"

Navigating a crisis with Runway

This fall, influencer-driven growth that had fueled the platform began to stall as competition flooded the market. It became harder for creators to stand out. "This fall has been ultra-competitive," Cooper said. “Other companies in the betting information space popped up, raised funding, and started marketing heavily. Creators aren’t just competing with each other; they’re also competing with companies now.”

SoBet’s influencer channel went net negative.

They needed to pivot, fast. "We had to pour more marketing dollars into paid ads to even out the top-line growth," Cooper said. They began featuring top creators in their ads to reduce costs and boost conversions.

“Without Runway, I don’t think we would’ve had the transparency into that issue or the tools to figure out how to fix it,” Cooper said. “Runway let us model out different scenarios: what happens if we spend more, if customer acquisition cost goes up, or if we spend less and conserve cash? We could see exactly how different decisions would affect our metrics. It gave us clarity to adjust our strategy, and helped us change the direction of our business.”

From his dorm room models in college to leading a fast-growing startup, Cooper has come a long way. "Runway has been absolutely critical for understanding the business and where we're heading.”

As SoBet continues its rapid growth and prepares to engage potential investors, Cooper said, “I don't even know if I'm going to use a deck. I might just use Runway."