A Madison startup founded by a longtime entrepreneur is building a tool designed to democratize information about slot machines for people who like to gamble and to help casinos boost loyalty among players.
Slot Check Inc. makes a web app and soon-to-be mobile app that shows players real-time performance information for specific machines on a casino floor.
"Slot machines are no longer these boxes that just take your money," Slot Check founder and CEO Grant Stousland said. "I can now see, 'When did it pay up jackpots? Has it been underpaying or overpaying? What's the volatility of this machine?'"
For casinos, Slot Check is a marketing and player loyalty tool that Stousland said could encourage players to visit the casino more often and spend more money at the slots.
Slot Check piloted its app throughout 2022 with Lake of the Torches Resort Casino in Lac du Flambeau. It officially launched the app in December 2022 and this year is expanding to a second site, Eureka Casino in Las Vegas.
The startup is also looking to partner with four to 12 more casinos this year and would love to work with Milwaukee's Potawatomi Hotel & Casino and Ho-Chunk Gaming in Madison, Stousland said.
Slot Check has four full-time employees as well as a development team in India, Stousland said. But finding talent, even offshore, has been a major challenge, he said.
"Covid has just shot the cost of software developers through the roof," Stousland said. "Developers that were making $100,000 all of a sudden are making $200,000 or $300,000."
A full-time business management faculty member at Madison Area Technical College, Stousland is no stranger to entrepreneurship.
While in college in the 1980s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stousland started a T-shirt company that led to a career in apparel. He bought and later sold a company in Phoenix that produced merchandise for celebrities like Dennis Rodman and Jerry Springer, and did private label work for brands including Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren.
Stousland got into the gaming industry more than a decade ago when he was tapped to lead a "failed tech startup" called Gaming Informatics, he said.
With Stousland at the helm, the company launched a regulatory software product that's used by several state agencies and around 250 casinos across the country, according to Stousland. Gaming Informatics was sold to Kobetron LLC in 2016.
Stousland founded Slot Check in 2020 and closed its first round of venture financing in 2021. It received $500,000 from Winnow Fund, an early-stage venture firm in Madison that's part of the state-sponsored Badger Fund of Funds.
Slot Check currently is raising a second round of funding and has raised $650,000 so far, according to a March 8 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Given the nature of Slot Check and Stousland's experience buying and selling companies, an acquisition is the likely eventual exit plan for Slot Check, Stousland.
"We're doing something revolutionary, kind of what Zynga did in 2008 with their social slots," Stousland said. "If we get to 12 (casinos), we're already going to be in the sights of some industry giants that are going to take interest in this."
