PHL Inno's weekly "Startup Spotlight" feature highlights founders and new businesses cropping up in the region.
The startup: ShotCaller is an app that offers sports-focused contests where users can win prizes from local businesses.
Founded: 2020
Home base: Philadelphia and Minneapolis
Founder: Hunter Dansbury, 39, a South Jersey native and former AT&T product manager.
The seeds of ShotCaller were sowed during the 2017 NFL Draft in Philadelphia. The NFL Draft represents a time when sports fans gather as a community, but are often inundated with ads about sports betting, Dansbury said. Sports betting has climbed in popularity in recent years as states increasingly legalize the practice, and while Dansbury is not a gambler, he wanted to create a platform where casual sports fans can interact with each other.
“I was like, 'There's got to be a lot of people out there like me who just want to party on game day and do it in a casual manner,'” he said. “And so that's really where the genesis was, and just trying to find out how to make sports conversations more fun and social.”
The product: ShotCaller, which is not a betting platform, runs contests for sports fans to make predictions about how teams will perform to win prizes from local businesses. The app is available on the App Store and the Google Play store.
For example, ShotCaller works with a business to sponsor a contest, such as a trivia event, on the app. Users can sign up, make their predictions and participate in a group chat with other users. Winners will receive prizes from that business. Events can be in-person or virtual, and winners can take home prizes like free takeout, gift cards and more. Businesses don’t pay ShotCaller to participate.
“Gouging [restaurants] is not really on our agenda,” Dansbury said.
Funding: ShotCaller has not raised any growth capital. The startup is applying to pitch competitions and is looking to raise a $950,000 pre-seed round later this year.
The goal: ShotCaller plans to extend its reach with businesses through pilot programs in the Northeast and in the Twin Cities area, Dansbury said. The startup will launch its next set of contests at the start of the upcoming baseball season.
ShotCaller is weighing adding a subscription model to the app to up the value of prizes available to users, Dansbury said. Rather than offering free food or drinks from a local restaurant for regular users, subscribers would get access to higher-tier prizes like flights or hotel rooms.
Dansbury also sees opportunity in offering in-app purchases on ShotCaller for users to customize in-app stickers and backgrounds, similar to purchasing digital items in video games like Fortnite.
