First Pitch is back. On October 1, five early-stage founders will take the stage at SBC Summit in Lisbon with three minutes each to make their case to a panel of industry judges. The competition, co-organized with BettingStartups, has become one of gaming's most visible launchpads for early-stage companies, and this year's winner takes home a prize package valued at more than €100,000.
BettingStartups sat down with each of the five finalists ahead of the competition. Here's what they had to say.
Betsy (Teemu Huuhtanen, CEO & Co-founder)
What they do: Betsy is a social prediction platform that turns the feed into something you play rather than scroll, with users moving through a personalized stream of predictions across sports, culture, casino games and creator content and placing a position in a single tap. Every "Betsy" becomes content others can react to. The pitch is that the category hasn't meaningfully changed in two decades, still built around odds and margins rather than the social act of predicting with friends.
What they're saying: A closed beta in May returned a 76.4 on the Sean Ellis product-market-fit test against a 40% benchmark, plus 63% day-seven retention and a 4.4-out-of-5 rating. The Nordic team of seven brings deep gaming experience but no sportsbook operators, which the founder frames as an advantage. "None of us have been in the sportsbook business before, and we believe that's the secret sauce," said CEO and co-founder Teemu Huuhtanen.
GMonitor (Rishin Kesarla, CEO)
What they do: GMonitor provides competitive and market intelligence to iGaming operators, tracking external signals—rival promotions, hot games, advertising strategy—and synthesizing them to show where an operator stands, why competitors are winning and how to close the gap. Intelligence is localized market by market and personalized per customer. The product is live with operators across Europe and Latin America.
What they're saying: The founding thesis is that operators are rich in internal data but nearly blind to what's happening outside their own walls—a gap that widens as crash games, prediction markets and PVP formats reshape the space. GMonitor positions itself between one-off consultant reports and generic analytics dashboards. "We have the benefits of software, but we match the depth of consultants," said CEO Rishin Kesarla.
InsightPlay.ai (Cristian Barbosa, COO & Co-founder)
What they do: InsightPlay.ai builds AI agents for customer experience, aiming to have every operator-player interaction—acquisition, retention, reactivation, support—handled by an agent. The argument is unit economics: the white-glove engagement once reserved for VIPs can now reach the entire player base. It's live with enterprise operators in Latin America and Europe, with North America next.
What they're saying: InsightPlay.ai is the only returning finalist, back after co-founder Javier pitched the Americas edition in June—this time with Christian at the mic. The company has already won an SBC award and built Bruna, the official AI concierge for SBC Summit reaching some 40,000 delegates over WhatsApp. "Our vision is that any interaction between an operator and its players is managed by an AI agent," said COO & co-founder Cristian Barbosa.
Safefy (Eduardo Cesar Franceschett, Founder)
What they do: Safefy is a monitoring platform built entirely for iGaming, running AI agents that detect shifts in player behavior to protect both player and operator at scale. It sits downstream of onboarding, monitoring every player every day. The company started with an anti-money-laundering module in Brazil, added responsible gaming, and is now building a risk and anti-fraud layer—aiming to become the industry's single monitoring system.
What they're saying: Safefy's framing is that cognitive monitoring at scale is exactly where AI earns its keep. "We're more like a data tech company than another iGaming company," said founder Eduardo Cesar Franceschett. Fresh off a small pre-seed and gaining traction with several Brazilian clients, in its home market of 30M-plus players now in its second year of regulation, the company is positioning for a seed round and a push into the US and Europe.
Whizdom AI (Alfonso González García, CTO & Co-founder)
What they do: Whizdom AI gives operators three interconnected products on a single player-data layer: agents for support, an AI lobby for personalized content, and signals that flag the next best action. It's leading with the AI lobby, which targets a specific problem—operators spend heavily to acquire players, then serve them all the same lobby, games and offers. Integration is a single script rather than a rebuild.
What they're saying: The AI lobby is live across 11 brands, has run roughly 40 A/B experiments, and lifts personalized-player spend by up to 21%. The company booked about €470K in 2025, is tracking toward €800K this year, and is raising €1M to take the lobby past 20 brands. "Deciding to narrow the scope was actually more challenging than drafting the pitch itself," said CTO & co-founder Alfonso González García, on the discipline of cutting two products to go deep on one.
Listen to the full podcast on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
BettingStartups returns as the official host of the Startup Zone at SBC Summit 2026, a dedicated section of the show floor built to put early-stage betting and gaming companies in front of the 40,000+ operators, investors, and partners in attendance.
We’ll also be hosting a series of startup and investment-focused panel discussions on the Innovation Stage, and the always popular First Pitch competition will round out the packed schedule—all to shine a light on the industry’s vibrant startup ecosystem!
Secure your ticket to SBC Summit now using code BETTINGSTARTUPSVIP for a 30% discount.
