{"id":242301,"date":"2026-05-25T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/the-pitch-trick-that-helped-an-esports-startup-raise-20m-when-vcs-only-wanted-ai-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:00:00","slug":"the-pitch-trick-that-helped-an-esports-startup-raise-20m-when-vcs-only-wanted-ai-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/the-pitch-trick-that-helped-an-esports-startup-raise-20m-when-vcs-only-wanted-ai-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"The pitch trick that helped an eSports startup raise $20M when VCs only wanted AI | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Earlier this year, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/lucrasports.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lucra Sports<\/a> founder and CEO Dylan Robbins did something that no one else has ever done.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He landed famed public investor Cathie Wood and her ARK Invest Venture Fund as a lead in a startup fundraising round. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lucra announced last month <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/04\/22\/cathie-woods-ark-makes-its-first-lead-investment-in-startup-lucra-and-it-isnt-ai\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">that it raised a $20 million Series B, led by the ARK fund<\/a>, with participation from several other VCs.\u00a0Robbins attracted ARK even though the fund had previously gotten badly burned on a similar eSports company: Skillz, a skill-based gaming platform in which the fund <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/investorplace.com\/2021\/10\/cathie-woods-sklz-stock-share-sale-shouldnt-deter-investors\/\" target=\"_blank\">invested heavily before divesting<\/a> at a loss.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On top of that, Dylan landed this big fish as an investor even though his company is not in the one area that all VCs are currently chasing: AI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lucra offers white-label interactive gaming competitions as a novel kind of loyalty program for businesses that serve consumers. Rather than, say, earning points toward a coupon, Lucra\u2019s clients offer online tournaments for prizes, or supports friendly wagers between their customers on who will win games. Its customers include Five Iron Golf, Dave &amp; Buster\u2019s, and Chess King.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"tcembed-iframe tcembed--megaphone wp-block-tc23-podcast-player__embed\" height=\"200px\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm?e=TCML9181081292\"><\/iframe>\n\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Robbins told us there were two secrets in how he landed a big-name investor against such odds:<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1. <strong>Be friendly to everyone, anywhere<\/strong> because you never know when a casual conversation will turn into your major investor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2. <strong>Lead your pitch with AI<\/strong> even if you aren\u2019t a famed AI scientist and aren\u2019t building models, agents, or anything AI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To the first point, the seeds to Lucra\u2019s fundraising journey began when Robbins was playing darts in a New York bar. He met another guy at the dartboard, and they enjoyed a few games together.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSix months later, we ran into each other at the bar again. The same\u00a0darts\u00a0bar.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0like, \u2018Good to see you.\u00a0How\u2019s\u00a0it going?\u2019 And we got to\u00a0talking\u00a0and I asked him what he did for work. And he told me he worked\u00a0at\u00a0ARK,\u201d Robbins recalled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Robbins told him about Lucra and the contact introduced him to the investment team at ARK, which wound up writing a small check in his Series A round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMy first piece of advice on all of this\u00a0is\u00a0you never know who\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0talking to. Just go around, be nice, meet people, have\u00a0fun,\u201d Robbins says. Let that lead to good conversations, which will lead to introductions, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Flash forward a few years to the end of 2025, when AI had overtaken venture funding like honeysuckle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lucra Sports had really found its lane with its white-labeling service. It was ready to raise a Series B to fuel growth and new ideas like adding mini-games into its offerings. (Lucra just invested in a mini-game development partner to build out this capability.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Robbins kept running into an AI-shaped wall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe were raising in Q4 of 2025, which was then, like even now, kind of peak AI mayhem,\u201d Robbins said. \u201cOne out of every three calls, the first line, they would stop the meeting and say, oh, we\u2019re only investing in AI now, I don\u2019t want to waste your time. To the point where they wouldn\u2019t even let me pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The rest told him they were only investing in AI after they heard the pitch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So Robbins tried a new tactic. He adjusted his pitch and his deck to discuss AI right out of the gate. The revised pitch argued that if AI works, people are going to have more free time to play games with friends at the bar or online \u2014 hence his business will be a winner \u2014 and if it doesn\u2019t, a non-AI bet starts to look like smart diversification. It was a hedge either way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt was a small cohort of people that\u00a0would really take it\u00a0seriously,\u201d he said of his pitch. ARK, fortunately, was one of them. Once committed, the lead investor made introductions to other VCs to help fill out the round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Underpinning all of this were good business fundamentals, including \u201cconsistent year over year growth, not just one spurt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The final lesson Robbins learned was that, especially for a non-AI business, VCs want to hear a big dream. Robbins had one: a total addressable market of anyone who plays games of any kind, from pickleball to Wordle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSo\u00a0our TAM is\u00a0almost every\u00a0American\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a018 to 70, right?\u201d Robbins said. Even so, he had one VC send a rejection that he printed out and posted to the wall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI sent them our growth chart and our TAM, which was like crazy, up into the right growth potential, huge, big, billions of TAM. And the response was: \u2018TAM\u2019s too small.\u2019 That was the response. Like, our growth rate was too slow,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He said this was a \u201creminder\u201d to him \u201cto think even bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI have to put myself in that mindset and really swing for the fences if I want to raise venture capital money,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>When you purchase through links in our articles, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/techcrunch-affiliate-monetization-standards\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/05\/25\/the-pitch-trick-that-helped-an-esports-startup-raise-20m-when-vcs-only-wanted-ai\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this year, Lucra Sports founder and CEO Dylan Robbins did something that no one else has ever done. He landed famed public investor Cathie Wood and her ARK Invest Venture Fund as a lead in a startup fundraising round. Lucra announced last month that it raised a $20 million Series B, led by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-242301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}