In this interview, Sam Rattner recounts his rapid rise as an entrepreneur, beginning with his decision to drop out of the University of Missouri to launch a startup. He details how he built the company, secured early traction, and ultimately sold it for $40 million when he was just 23 years old. Rattner also shares his experiences in the online poker world, his foresight regarding the legalization of U.S. gaming, and his recent efforts to rebuild betting technology that offers alternatives to legacy white‑label solutions. The conversation provides insights into his mindset, strategic decisions, and the broader evolution of the gaming and betting industry.
You drop out of college and you start a company that you end up selling for— can you say how much you sold for?
Yeah, it was $40 million.
At that time, you must have been pretty young.
How old were you when you sold? 23.
What was the idea and how did you make that happen?
I was actually at the University of Missouri for a year. Enjoyed my time there. Was not for me, though. Always wanted to kind of start a company. When I dropped out, I didn't really have the exact plan yet, but I did always play a lot of online poker. I started hearing whispers of them legalizing gaming nationally here in the United States. I just sat down and essentially just wrote out for hours how I thought the market would evolve. And my conclusion was that there will be early players. You'll have DraftKings and FanDuel. It really would end up being dominated by either the brick-and-mortar casino companies. To date, all the technology had been built overseas because it's been around for 50 years, but it was like built in the early 2000s where you had like these desktop applications to place a bet and then to get to mobile, they just like compressed it into a mobile experience. So I said, what if I just rebuilt all that and then called these big companies and said, hey, don't white label this garbage from Sweden and pay some huge rev share. What if we just do a deal?
