The Product Pivot That Ended in a 3-Week Acquisition

All right, I'm here with Adnan, the founder of Delta Sports, recently got acquired. Adnan, how you doing today?

I'm good, I'm good. A little tired, but I'm ready. Right on.

Well, excited to hear your story, how you built the business and acquisition. But before we dive into that, do you want to give a brief introduction for those that may not know you?

Yeah, so hi, my name is Adnan Jonathan. I am 21 years old. I just turned 21 a couple months ago, but—

Happy belated birthday, man.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I'm from Jersey. Currently, this is like a year since I've left school and then kind of just went on my own path. Used to be a track athlete, was a competitive gamer for a couple years as well.

So yeah. No way. What games did you play?

I played Madden.

Oh, hell yeah, dude. I used to play Madden quite a bit. I was in the top 100 for like A day trying to get off the rankings. Love Madden. This was when the Chiefs were like super crazy. I played the Chiefs and deep passed it out to Tyreek Hill.

I think it had to have been like, what, Madden 2021, something like that?

It was something like that. I think it might've been 2020. But anyways, tell me about Delta Sports. How'd you start it? How'd you get the idea?

What did it do? Okay, so Delta Sports was basically like a prediction market tool, mainly for sports. It's kind of what it evolved into. The idea was kind of just, I was really looking for industries that I felt like I could, I had some knowledge in and also something with a little bit of potential. And I came across the idea. At first I wanted to do something like a ChatGPT for sports. It was like you would type in something to like an LLM and then it would spit out an answer. But the issue is I wasn't really that technically smart and it was also not really a great idea cuz it's just not like the best UI for the industry. So I was like, okay, so let me just copy what everyone else does. And then I did that a couple of weeks after starting. I just kind of switched the whole product around and yeah, we kind of just used the prediction market APIs to read exchanges, see where the best people were putting their money. And then yeah, that's how we kind of, we built the platform based on that. Yeah.

Nice.

Break it down for me.

Like, I don't know anything about betting markets. Like, what did it, what problem did it solve? Was this so I could find like super good system makers?

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. You could pretty much see exactly like, for example, someone put $10,000 on the Seahawks to win a game, right? You could see exactly where it happened and then also their previous history, if they're successful, how many trades they placed in their lifetime. And then I kind of used it for myself as well and it was profitable for a pretty long term, especially college basketball. Great for it because there's, there's so many games going on, so there's a lot more edge to be had. So you can gain like a pretty meaningful edge on the market.

Got it. So this allows me to see like where all the good bettors are placing their bets and basically copy their bets.

Is that right? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

Okay, cool. I'm familiar with products like that, but for the stock market, did you take inspiration from any other tools?

When it came to the product, not really. I tried to kind of copy some marketing stuff, but it was a little too complicated to do. Like To copy their marketing. But yeah, I was, I kind of looked at, what was that? It was called AutoTrade. I think that's what it was called. It's like one of those things where you can copy like famous people's portfolios. And so, yeah, but it's not like as simple with betting, but I kind of took inspiration from that a little bit.

Nice. Super cool. How'd you get the first users and customers?

That's funny. So I really didn't know like what to do, honestly, but then I saw somewhere that you could post onto Reddit and I was like, okay, let me try this out. So I went to Reddit, made a post talking about what do people use for this stuff? And then after that, I created a way that so I could share shareable assets and I can make custom screenshots where I could post, I don't know, someone put this money on this and I would just keep posting that over and over again. Somehow I never got banned on Reddit. And then I think the first post, it did decent. And then I kept going and then a week later I got like 50,000 views on a post and I kind of got customers through that.

Yeah, that is super smart. So you're taking screenshots, like using the app and pointing out some crazy stuff that's happening. Like, oh, you have to bet on McGregor to win or something like that. Cool. I love that. That's super smart. Cause then you just have like endless content.

Like I think, you know, for sure.

Yeah. Instead of just having a few posts, I'm writing, hey, I built this app. I think you really enjoy it. If you're into sports betting, you're just constantly creating new content of just interesting bets happening. You would do that hundreds of times unless you get banned.

Yeah, I would wake up, I'd do one at 9 AM. I tested every single posting time because Reddit's algorithm is pretty like gameable. It's not like the other algorithms, like the short-form algorithms. I mean, if you post a post and you upvote it, if you get 5 to 10 upvotes within the first 20, 30 minutes, it's going to go viral no matter what. So I wish I had a better way to do it, but I would beg my friends to upvote it when I first post it. And then I would just kind of do that as much as possible. But it was funny, my best posts were like, I would not send anybody to upvote. My best posts would be those. And yeah, it was like, it was just testing over and over again. It was my kind of first experience ever marketing anything.

So. Nice. Super cool. Did you look at any other channels or was it just Reddit?

Yeah, I tried. So I tried TikTok. I tried TikTok's live shows, but I just kept getting banned over and over again. And at the time I really didn't understand like Anything based on short-form content, which is pretty bad. If I like kind of the knowledge I have now, since I'm building my first mobile app, if I kind of had some of this knowledge, I'd be like, oh, okay. So this is like a much easier way to grow instead of just trying to like spam Reddit. There's probably like easier ways to grow. Nice.

Reddit's super scrappy though. There's tons of users and customers. I hear from founders all the time. That's where they get their first customers.

Yeah.

But I think you know the answer to this question.

You had, you know, it's a great business.

You have product market fit. Things are going super well. What made you decide to ultimately sell the business?

There's a couple of things. First, I mean, personally, I didn't really see like the long-term potential. Obviously it could have grown. I think you can grow any product to a certain amount, but it was like, it was kind of the point where it wasn't really anything exciting for me. I didn't really enjoy it that much. And also I didn't like, it was pretty hard to make like short-form video content for it. So I was just like, yeah, I don't think this is going to work. So I kind of decided like I just wanted to move on and maybe work on something I'm a little more passionate about.

Nice. I think it makes a ton of sense, especially if you can find a buyer that is super excited about it. It's a great time. That's good. Tell me about the acquisition process. What was your expectations when you first listed on acquire.com and how did it go?

So at first, I think, I don't remember exactly when I listed, but at first I really expected nothing. I was just trying to list it, see what I would get. And then I eventually listed it. And then I started getting a few interests, stuff like that. And then eventually there was a point where I got a few buyers. I got on calls with them and then one of them probably pretty much wanted to move forward instantly. And then the acquisition process was pretty simple. Just had to sign some stuff, make sure everything was in order and the platform made it pretty easy. So it was pretty much done.

Right on. Love to hear it. Did you do anything to prepare for the acquisition? Did you put together any special docs or anything, or did you just list the business?

I mean, I just had to write some basic stuff on like how everything worked and then pretty much just an explanation of each marketing or each asset. And then, yeah, that's pretty much it. Just kind of giving the buyer an explanation on how everything worked.

Nice. What got the buyer excited? Was he a sports betting fan too, or did he have big ideas for the app?

I was not going to tell you. I have no idea, but I think he was excited. I'm not sure, honestly.

Nice. Like, what did you like about the buyer that you have ultimately sold the business to? Did they just have the best price? Were they only offer?

It was the best offer and it was like an easy process. He wanted to move it pretty fast. So I was like, okay, that works better for me. So yeah.

Nice. How was due diligence? Did that process take like a week or like a month?

There was like a couple of things. So first it was the due diligence part was probably, I'd say, I think 4 days, a little less than a week. But then there was also like other stuff like escrow.com, like took, kind of took forever. They don't work on the weekends. You gotta wait for like a few days, but yeah, it wasn't too long. I'd say the whole process lasted, I'd say 2 weeks, maybe 3. I'm not exactly sure, but something like that.

That's quick. That's good. Did you agree to do like a transition period with the buyer where you'll be around for questions or?

Yeah, we kind of, we agreed to, I mean, I'm always around, but like, So mandatory support of like, I'd say 45 days, pretty much.

Nice.

Yeah.

Right on. What'd you do to celebrate when the deal closed? Did you go out to a nice dinner or do anything fun?

That's funny. I, this is exactly what I did to celebrate. I got a membership at Lifetime. That's exactly, I just went and got it like a lifetime membership and that was pretty much it.

Hey, when you're building startups, you got to take care of yourself. That's super true.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Nice. Tell me, what are you working on next? You successfully sold a business.

What's next? Yeah. Okay. So this is, I've been working on this pretty much since a little bit before I got acquired, actually, I started working on this. It's a mobile app. It's pretty much, it's a screen time app. And instead of one of the regular screen time apps where your apps are locked, it pretty much forces you to, I think you can, you spin a wheel and then once you spin it, it gives you a random running challenge. So, so for 15 minutes, you have to run for at least 15 minutes and all of your apps are blocked off. Until you complete the run. And yeah, that's pretty much it. And it also has another thing we're experimenting. It's an alarm clock where you're forced to run pretty much. Yeah, it's like kind of what I'm working on right now. I just hired a bunch of UGC creators and working on getting influencers as well. So yeah, that's what I'm working on right now.

I love that. It sounds like a huge net positive to the world.

Yeah.

Now exercise, get off your phone. Yeah. Running was like a lot of people don't do.

Yeah. The easiest thing to do is just look at your own problems is I'm way, I'm on my phone way too much. I wanna get into running, so I was just like, why don't I make an app to keep myself off my phone and to put me, my, put myself on my running journey? So win-win.

I dig it. So if you actually run 15 minutes and that's when it unlocks your phone?

Yeah, so it's depending on the challenge, it could be, uh, it could be distance, could be minutes. So you have to, we track through our own platform or we also have a connection to Strava. So it tracks exactly how far you're running, how fast you're running. And then we also have like a kind of ranking system. And yeah, so you rank up based on how much you're staying off your phone and like how fast or like how much you're running. You can run as many times as you want. So yeah, that's kind of the premise of the app.

That's so cool. You should add an option where if you like are lifting weights, that counts too.

Yeah, no, I would, but like, I think Strava just makes it the kind of like GPS tracking makes it easy. I mean, that would be a good idea too, maybe for the future.

But yeah. All right. Well, dude, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I'm sure you're gonna absolutely crush it with this new app. If people wanna follow you online and learn more about your story, where can they find you?

Me personally, I don't think anywhere, but you can follow our mobile app. It's @cadencerun.app on Instagram. You might see me on there a little bit, but yeah, that's it. Right on, dude.

I'll put it in the show notes. Well, dude, congrats again on that acquisition and thanks again for coming on the podcast.

All right. Thank you. Thank you for having me, man.

Of course. Cheers.