During the 2026 Barcelona ICE exhibition, a special reverse pitch event caught the industry's attention. Travis Geiger, Chief Experience Officer at WagerWire, together with founders of startups like Loserball, THNDR, and ChatBet, disrupted the traditional power dynamics between startups and industry gatekeepers. Geiger launched "The Starties" project, directly targeting the industry's "pay-to-participate" awards that often favor established companies, sponsors, and financially robust players, proposing an innovative "startups evaluating startups" model. This project aims to provide exposure and recognition for early-stage companies without the need to appease fixed judges or business partners, allowing truly valuable startup projects to stand out. Information on innovative support cases and resource docking for related gambling industry startups can be found on the PASA official website.
Core Intent: Reject "Pay-to-Play" and Give Startups a Fair Stage
The inception of The Starties stemmed from dissatisfaction with the existing award mechanisms in the industry and a demand for innovation:
Breaking unwritten rules: Traditional awards often involve an implicit logic of "pay to participate, pay to win," with resources continuously leaning towards large enterprises, making it difficult for startups to emerge;
Pure model: Adhering to "startups evaluating startups," with judges who are also entrepreneurs understanding industry pain points and innovation value, ensuring unadulterated selection results;
Addressing real pain points: Startups often struggle to break through industry noise. Through shared exposure, mentorship, and other resources provided by the project, a dedicated community is built, empowering disadvantaged startup groups.
Geiger openly states that the existing award systems bury many potential early-stage projects, and The Starties aims to "return the power of recognition to the founders themselves."
Success Criteria: Not Judging Heroes by Revenue, Community Growth is Core
Unlike traditional commercially oriented awards, The Starties defines "success" entirely focused on the actual benefits to startups:
Core measurement dimensions: "Our success depends on the success of The Starties community members," Geiger emphasizes, the project does not pursue its own revenue, but rather looks at whether participating companies have gained real exposure, resources, and growth;
Clear platform positioning: Not considering itself a profit-oriented business project, but a pure startup community platform, all operations revolve around "serving startups";
Clear value orientation: Refusing to compromise selection fairness for commercial interests, always prioritizing the real needs of startups.
This "de-commercialized" positioning allows The Starties to form a unique differentiated advantage among many industry awards.
Development Challenges: Balancing Sponsorship and Original Intent, Rejecting Blind Expansion
As the project's influence gradually expands, how to attract large corporate sponsorships while adhering to the "founder-first" core culture becomes a key challenge for the team:
Adhering to value bottom lines: All founders have an "uncompromising value system," clearly not changing selection rules or community culture to cater to sponsors;
Providing solutions: Through "collective value protection, distributed leadership, collaborative expansion" three major approaches — not blindly scaling, but gradually expanding influence through collaborative activities among founders;
Maintaining community purity: Always focusing on the needs of startups, avoiding shifts in community nature due to the introduction of external sponsorships, ensuring the platform always serves founders.
This self-empowering movement initiated by startups not only provides a fairer recognition mechanism for the industry but also reflects the strong demands of the gambling industry's startup group to break resource monopolies and pursue equal development.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders," a gambling industry news channel:https://t.me/pasa_news
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PASA official website: https://www.pasa.news
