Pitch Deck That Sports Startup Mojo Used to Get a Key Investor

Vinit Bharara and Marc Lore have each started several companies, including Diapers.com, which they cofounded and sold to Amazon for $550 million. Lore also founded Jet.com, which Walmart bought in 2016 for $3 billion. 

Their latest venture, a new kind of sports-betting app called Mojo, harkens back to one of their first businesses together, The Pit, which was a site for trading sports cards that Topps bought in 2001. Their goal at the time was to create an "E-Trade meets ESPN" that would use trading cards as a proxy to value players, Bharara told Insider, but the strategy was too risky then.

But with legal sports-betting rippling across the US, and digital collectibles on the rise, the pair teamed up with MLB legend Alex Rodriguez and entrepreneur Bart Stein to rekindle the concept in the form of Mojo.

"I think this idea we had, the first one, was the biggest one," Bharara recalled Lore telling him.

Mojo is a kind of player stock market where users can trade on an athlete's performance as if it were shares in a company.

The startup closed in March a $75 million Series A led by Thrive Capital. It also announced in September an additional $25 million in equity and venture debt, with big-name investors including the NFL Players Association.

The app launched in September in New Jersey, and is regulated like other sportsbooks even though its users aren't wagering directly on the action in a game. Instead, they're banking on the trajectory of a player's career, the value of which fluctuates based on on-field stats like yards, touchdowns, and sacks.

For example, shares of Tom Brady are trading at $172 today, up from a value of around $3 in 2000 (if the platform had been around when Brady was the 199th sixth-round pick of the NFL Draft). Meanwhile, New York Jets quarterback Zach Wilson is down 6.7% over the last month after missing the first few weeks of the NFL season due to an injury.

The NFLPA relationship is important for Mojo because the app also uses NFL player names, images, and likenesses.

A Mojo analysis of Zach Wilson's performance from September 12. Mojo

Mojo isn't the first startup to bring elements of the stock market to gambling, as the US market grows. Companies including Sporttrade, BettorEdge, Prophet, and STX each have different models for sports betting and trading exchange. 

But Mojo's focus on athletes is unique, and could lend itself to player-driven markets like the US, where superstar athletes can draw as much loyalty as a given team.

Mojo launched with a focus on NFL players, and has since expanded to include college-football quarterbacks.

The company shared with Insider a version of the pitch deck that helped it secure funding from the NFLPA. Execs also walked investors through the app in meetings.

"Mojo's sports stock market is really the first of its kind, and we're incredibly excited to join as an investor," Steve Scebelo, president of NFL Players, Inc., said in a statement. "We see a huge opportunity for Mojo to transform sports fandom by bringing fans closer to the players they know and love."

Here is the 11-slide pitch deck (which excludes financial information that was redacted by the company):

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