Slapping “AI” on your startup’s pitch deck is basically table stakes right now. When a founder raised $20 million from Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest for an eSports gamification loyalty startup without those two letters in the spotlight, it got us wondering how the conversation even started — especially when ARK had already been burned by a company operating in the same space.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Julie Bort sits down with Dylan Robbins, founder and CEO of Lucra, the white-label platform turning friendly competitions into loyalty programs for brands like golf courses, arcades, and pickleball clubs.

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Chapters:

00:00 Intro

1:43 How Lucra works

4:10 Meeting ARK Invest over darts and landing the Series B

7:24 Pitching a non-AI startup during peak AI mania

10:41 The growth metrics that won investors over

13:02 Overcoming ARK’s bad experience with Skillz and the B2B pivot

20:43 What’s next: the mini games vertical

29:25 Outro