SBC interviews Julien Cunze, CEO and Co-Founder of Btwiice

SBC business correspondent Mark McGuinness interviews  Julien Cunze, CEO and Co-Founder Btwiice. Sports betting insurance start up aims to  bookmakers with an all-inclusive solutions to exploit the ‘cash-in’ trend through offering their player base secured betting insurances when they play on a a partner platform. 

Btwiice were recently selected to compete at the EIG Expo Barcelona 2013 Start-Up Launch Pad. SBC’s Mark McGuinness caught up with Julian to discuss Btwiice service offering, his companys beginning steps in igaming and EIG Barcelona 2013.

 

SBC: Julien it was a pleasure to meet you at the EiG Start-Up Launch pad.  For all our readers can you tell us a little about yourself and why you decided to start BTwiice?

Julien: Thank you very much Mark.  I was just finishing my studies and aged 23 in 2010 when I set my first company up, together with my brother André and a friend, which was a Shoe Brand called Maurice & Moi. After developing it for two years and selling our shoes on Japan Airlines, in New York and some other cool places, I had the initial Btwiice idea. Indeed, the French online gambling market just opened at that time and the idea of getting rid of a bet while the game was in running came up to me. This is how the initial idea of Btwiice was born.

Then, we set Btwiice Ltd in the UK with André again and were joined by Ismael, a friend of ours, to develop the IT. This was back in November 2011… and for the two past years we have improved our product by working on our concept and receiving a lot of feedback from many professionals in the gambling industry who spent a lot of time discussing Btwiice with us. So now, in October 2013 we are UK GC licensed, have a working prototype with all agreements enabling us to launch Btwiice and we were able in July 2013 to convince Lee Richardson to join our start-up as a non-executive director. Today, after being shortlisted for the EiG StartUp Launchpad and having had a boost in Barcelona we are in the process of funding our company (we’re looking for 300£k) and expect to go live and launch in Q1 2014.

 

SBC: In-play betting and cash-out betting are becoming  popular differentiators among a handful of betting operators? Does the BTwiice product level the playing field for perhaps some of the smaller to medium sized operators?

Julien: Indeed, for the past nine months we have done a lot of market research and seen this cash-out trend rising! It is not only proving hugely popular among the recreational players who have adopted it and use it massively but it is also great for operators to make money, market and promote their brand. Above all the use of cash-out improves the players’ behavior: they tend to recycle their bets, bet more and show a reduced propensity to churn!

Btwiice Betting Insurance is a very similar feature as the cash-out. It enables the players to take control of the bet very easily, by locking in a profit or mitigating a loss while the game is in running. Our market research shows that the Tier1 operators have or will develop such a tool very easily (either in house or on exclusivity contracts with their software providers). The opportunity we see is to offer a turnkey, risk free and cost effective solution to Tier2/Tier3 online bookmakers to develop a cash-out app immediately.

Our aim is to offer too small to medium online sportsbooks our solution which is very easy and takes one week to integrate. Also, our solution involves no trading risk on the betting insurance for our bookmaker clients nor modifies anyhow their usual bookmaking activity. Finally, our solution is agnostic and adapts to any bookmaker or platform.

 

SBC: 75% of In-play betting is on football, so shall we see more betting insurance services being offered to other popular in-play sports such as horse racing over a certain distance or shall it be applicable to longer sports with defined duration times such as American sports, cricket, tennis etc?

Julien: Today we are focused on In-play football as it is from far the largest segment but we have already plans for adapting our solution to other sports. So yes, we believe such tools will arise…

For horse racing we have our own idea and we might be coming up with something soon… but generally speaking, such a cash-out inspired app as betting insurance, adapts very well for sports with defined and longer duration times because again, the presupposition is that the recreational player bets on it and changes his mind at some point while the event is happening… Tennis is adapted, cricket as well and American sports, yes also!

 

SBC: Mobile is a big driver of in-play betting, are you seeing any customer preferences by channel on cash-out. For example is desktop seeing more cash-out requests, than mobile?

Julien: As the cash-out is an in-play betting tool and betting insurance is largely inspired by it, mobile remains probably the largest device for cash-out users.

Betfair, when they promote it on TV are using the mobile app of their tool to show the ideal user experience. We believe as they do, our typical recreational player wants to insure their bet when he is watching his favorite team in a pub with friends… By the way, Btwiice betting insurance is developed for mobile as well!

SBC: You have showcased the business at EiG and had a good response from the industry, what’s next for BTwiice?

Julien: We are in the process of funding our company to go live. EiG has been a great vector for that, first, it was again a validation of our product as we had huge interest from many operators of the industry (some very big guys even came straight to our small booth!). Second, it enabled us to properly start our process of seeking funds.

Today we are in discussions with both potential investors and prospective clients and we hope to launch our B2B software solution Q1 2014 to operators in the industry…

SBC: Lastly any final message for our readers like should we cash-out our antepost bets on Chelsea?

 

Julien: As a Marseille fan, hence Drogba fan and hence Chelsea fan… I  suggest to consider twice before cashing-out these great bets on Chelsea. Let them do and Mourinho will make them win the league. Now, a clear cash-out opportunity is on the Gunners, they are playing above their real level even with the new comer, Ozil and the cash-out value is definitively interesting!

 

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Julien Cunze  CEO & Co Founder – Btwiice