Chicago native Lewis Burik's first job back in the Windy City, after a stint in California's Bay Area for college and work, was as a strategy and venture analyst at TechNexus Venture Collaborative. But he soon moved to the entrepreneurial side to launch his startup DubClub.
"I was only there for a year, and for a good chunk of that, I was doing DubClub as a moonlighter project," he told Chicago Inno. "But I learned what makes a high-performing seed-stage company, Series A stage company, and gained an understanding of the kinds of questions that investors ask."
That period of learning seems to have paid off, as his tech platform that connects sports content creators with their subscribers recently landed new funding just as the NFL is getting underway.
DubClub closed earlier this month on $7.5 million in Series A funding led by Roseanne Wincek of Renegade Partners. The round included participation from Dave Gilboa of Warby Parker.
The new financing brings DubClub's total funding to date to more than $10 million after closing a $3 million seed round in 2022 led by Tripp Jones of Uncork Capital and Brian Reilly of Will Ventures.
Through the platform, cappers — or sports handicappers that study and wager on sports events — get paid by publishing their bets on DubClub, where amateur sports bettors can subscribe to their exclusive content and insights. Cappers set their own rates, with DubClub providing the tools to automate the logistics and grow their subscriber bases.
Since its inception, DubClub has received more than $50 million in subscription payments for cappers and has processed more than 5 million transactions from paying subscribers.
Burik hopes the new funding will give him more "firepower" to continue to grow his team.
DubClub has around 20 employees, some of whom work remotely and others in Chicago out of TechNexus. Burik said he will look to add another five to 10 employees over the next six to 12 months.
The company is headquartered in both Chicago and San Francisco, and Burik said he wants to continue to have a strong presence in both markets.
Burik's links to the Bay Area go back to his college days when he met his future co-founder Ryan Gaertner and Andrew Daschbach while playing sports at Stanford University.
Burik said his goal with DubClub is to create a destination where everyone — the creators and the subscribers — "win more together."
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