Sports betting has always had a house problem. Not the kind you flip on HGTV, the kind that takes its cut no matter how sharp you are. That “vig” is the quiet tax on every wager, the silent rake that makes even the best bettors play on a tilted field. Jacob Fortinsky and Kelechi Ukah looked at that system, saw the inefficiency, and decided they weren’t here to tip the dealer, they were here to take the table.
Both Harvard grads, they came from very different corners of the quantitative world. Jacob Fortinsky mixed social studies with Wall Street seasoning at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, plus time in the political trenches as Special Assistant to Rep. Jamie Raskin. Kelechi Ukah brought the physics and math firepower, honed as a Quant Trader at Jane Street and sharpened at CERN’s ATLAS experiment. Together, they founded Novig, a peer-to-peer sports prediction market where the only opponent is another bettor, not a house with an appetite for your bankroll.
This week, Novig announced an $18 million Series A led by Forerunner Ventures, with returning believers Y Combinator, NFX, Perceptive Ventures, and Gaingels. That stacks their total funding at $24.4 million after a $6.4 million seed in 2023 backed by Lux Capital, Paul Graham, Joe Montana, Arash Ferdowsi, and a who’s-who of smart money. And the market is proving they weren’t just lucky on the opening hand, since launching publicly in September 2024, monthly trading volume is up 50x, with over 90% of trades fully peer-to-peer and user retention triple that of traditional sportsbooks.
Novig Cash has already cleared $2 billion in annualized volume, and 43% of users are profitable compared to the industry’s dismal 3%. That’s what happens when your matching engine moves 100x faster than the industry standard and confirms live bets instantly instead of making you wait 80 seconds. Licensed in Colorado, live in 42 states and D.C., and now partnered with OpticOdds for data across ATP, PGA, and UFC, they’re setting the market, not chasing it.
The Series A will fuel deeper coverage, more sports, and features like leaderboards, head-to-head trading, and parlays, plus a web app, fiat payment options, and a hiring spree across engineering, product, and growth. With a $300 billion U.S. sports betting market in sight, Novig is making the case that transparency and speed aren’t luxuries, they’re the new odds-on favorite.
