Funding round of $18 million by Novig successfully completed; growth plans ahead.
Novig, a commission-free, peer-to-peer sports trading platform in the United States, has announced the completion of an $18 million Series A funding round. The funding round was led by Forerunner, with participation from existing investors such as NFX, Gaingels, Perceptive Ventures, and Y Combinator.
The funding will allow Novig to scale its mission across more sports, more formats, and ultimately, to more users. With this new capital, the platform intends to deliver new features for its growing customer base, including head-to-head trading, group contests, and leaderboards.
Novig's peer-to-peer market model, which eliminates hidden fees and biased odds by having users trade directly with each other rather than against the house, has driven rapid growth since its public launch in September 2024. This funding round positions Novig to capitalize on that momentum by broadening its offerings and infrastructure.
Fawzi Itani, Principal at Forerunner, expressed excitement about the latest funding round, highlighting Novig's alignment with key secular trends in gaming and entertainment. Itani noted that the Novig team brings a sophisticated and nuanced perspective to sports prediction markets, building a system that is more fair, community-oriented, rewarding, and fun.
Jacob Fortinsky, Novig's CEO and co-founder, stated that Novig is the #1 sports prediction market in the US. Fortinsky emphasized that Novig offers a true peer-to-peer market and rewards its users for their skill. He mentioned that the support from leading tech investors is a powerful endorsement of Novig's mission to democratize sports betting for good.
Novig's organic growth, according to Fortinsky, speaks to the strength of its product and the passion of its community. The company plans to use the new capital for product development, expansion, and growing its coverage of new sports.
In addition to expanding its sports coverage, Novig also plans to grow its product and engineering teams and launch a full-featured web app. The platform will support fiat payment methods like debit and credit cards, introduce a full-featured web app, and scale hiring in engineering, product, and growth teams to accelerate product development and market expansion.
Key planned features and expansions include adding coverage of additional sports beyond the current offerings to deepen market presence, launching new interactive features like leaderboards, group contests, and head-to-head trading to enhance user engagement and competitiveness, integrating fiat on-ramps to accept debit and credit card payments, simplifying deposits and broadening accessibility, and developing a web platform to complement the existing app, enhancing accessibility and user experience.
Novig has also made key hires to support its growth. In June, the company hired Chris Staszak as Senior Legal Counsel and Alex Wolf as Chief Legal Officer.
With this funding round, Novig is poised to revolutionize the sports prediction market, offering a fair and engaging platform for sports fans to participate in. The platform provides a system that offers every sports fan "a fair shot." Sports bettors on Novig trade directly with each other instead of playing against the house, creating a more transparent and equitable system. This funding will allow Novig to scale its mission across more sports, more formats, and ultimately, to more users.
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