AI-driven sports betting and community building, with Ryan Robey of Staicy.win

Ryan Robey, founder of Staicy.win and a trial lawyer in Kentucky, argues that AI picks alone are not enough: his subscription betting service pairs custom models with a professional handicapper and a community. He talks to Jon Bruford about the models, revenue and how the business started.

In this episode

• Robey says they put "AI" right in the name; it began as an AI agent giving picks, then over 18 months dropped the agent and became software (7:14, 7:36).

• Models built by devs and quants set "fair lines" against Vegas odds. On a typical MLB day, he says, they produce about 1,700 predictions, of which maybe 60 show a slight edge or better (8:11, 8:46, 11:32).

• A professional handicapper, the "chief odds analyst", oversees the models and gets a weekly AI report; a change of baseballs around the All-Star break meant re-updating the model (15:37, 16:26).

• Revenue is subscriptions: seven days free with no credit card, then $199 a month (26:53, 27:24).

• It began 20 months ago as a crypto project, shut around April after US securities guidance; the models took 16 months to build, and first marketing goes on NFL season (28:14, 29:26, 29:52).

• It posts every pick and result, he says, including a nine or 11% ROI in a given month against the 3-5% a year pros target; community is its second differentiator (31:46, 32:13, 32:35).

Episode from The Gambling Files (RTFM) by Jon Bruford and Fintan Costello, published on YouTube.