Breakaway Accelerator Interview CrowdCover

If you’re over 30, you remember what betting used to feel like. You were at a sportsbook or a bar. You were holding a physical ticket. And when the game was on the line, you were high-fiving (or cursing) the stranger next to you.

Mobile betting changed the math. It made wagering convenient, but it stripped it of its soul. It turned a social event into a solitary scroll.

Max Goodman founded Crowdcover to fix that friction.

His vision? The Twitch of sports betting. A platform where influencers and handicappers host live streams, and the "ticket" to enter the room is a verified bet on the game.

But Max faced a common hurdle for many founders in our space: he wasn't a "true coder," and he was bootstrapping while working other jobs.

Here is how Max moved from a concept to a live App Store launch, the role data played in his infrastructure, and the lessons early-stage founders can steal from his playbook.

 

1. The Problem: The “Silent Sportsbook”

The best startups usually come from a founder scratching their own itch. For Max, the itch was the lack of camaraderie in the digital age.

“Betting is an inherently social activity,” Max says. “It’s just as fun to route with your friends as it is to talk crap to them. I built Crowdcover because I missed that.”

Crowdcover creates exclusivity through "skin in the game." To enter a stream hosted by a favourite comedian or Ohio State podcaster, you must place a bet on the specific game they are watching. It filters out the trolls and ensures everyone in the room is emotionally invested in the outcome.

The Lesson for Founders:
Max didn’t try to reinvent the sportsbook. He didn’t try to compete with FanDuel or DraftKings on taking wagers. He built a layer on top of them.

Takeaway: Look for the "emotional gap" in existing tech. The big incumbents are great at transactions; they are often terrible at community. That’s your wedge.

2. The “Aha” Moment: The Non-Technical Founder’s Secret Weapon

Max was building Crowdcover for three years, but the velocity changed dramatically in the last 12 months.

The catalyst? Generative AI.

"To be 100% transparent, I am not on the App Store right now if ChatGPT doesn't exist," Max admits.

For years, the barrier to entry for sports tech was the cost of development. You needed a technical co-founder or six figures to pay an agency. Max used AI to bridge his knowledge gap, enabling him to build features and iterate on the product without waiting for a dev team to have free time.

The Lesson for Founders:
"I'm not technical" is no longer a valid excuse. Resourcefulness beats raw coding ability in the early stages. Use AI to build your MVP, then bring in the heavy engineering artillery once you have traction.

3. Fueling the Room: The Data Challenge

Once you have users in a live room, you have to keep them there. You can’t ask them to leave the app to check the score or see who is pitching.

Max needed a "hub" experience. He needed tabs at the bottom of the stream showing:

  • Real-time scores
  • Live game stats
  • Schedules

The Data Dilemma:
This is the "Valley of Death" for sports startups.

  • The Giants: Sportradar and Genius are incredible, but they are priced for enterprises, not startups.
  • The Scrapers: Cheap APIs exist, but they break constantly and lack support.

"The major issue facing most betting startups is getting affordable and reliable data feeds," Max explains. "There's an open area that the Accelerator fits perfectly."

How CrowdCover Solved It:
Max integrated DataFeeds to power the utilitarian side of the app. He didn't need 50 years of historical regression data; he needed fast, accurate live game info to settle the context of the chat room.

  • Speed: The data had to keep pace with the live stream.
  • Support: As a non-technical founder, Max leaned heavily on the Rolling Insights support team to walk through integration.
  • Utility: The data feeds allowed Crowdcover to build features that kept users inside the ecosystem rather than bouncing to ESPN.

4. The Secret Sauce: Positive Friction and "Shared Fate"

In modern app design, we are usually taught to remove every possible click. Friction is the enemy.

Crowdcover does the opposite. They intentionally add a barrier to entry: The Bet.

By forcing users to sync their betting account and place a wager to enter a room, Max created a feature called "Positive Friction."

  • It filters the audience: Trolls don't pay to get in. The room is filled with people who actually care.
  • It aligns the incentives: Everyone in the chat is sweating the same outcome. When the home team scores, the chat explodes because everyone’s wallet is attached to the play.
  • It creates "Shared Fate": You aren't just watching a stream; you are riding a wave with the influencer.

The Lesson for Founders:
Don't be afraid to ask your users to commit. If the reward (an exclusive, high-quality community) is high enough, users will jump through the hoop. And once they do, they are far less likely to churn than a user who clicked a "free join" button.

5. Why Breakaway Matters

Building a B2C sports app is lonely work. Max joined the Breakaway Accelerator not just for the data, but for the ecosystem.

Through Breakaway, Max got:

  • Access: Direct lines to industry veterans like Steve and Josh.
  • Validation: Moving from a web-based beta to a polished iOS app.
  • Peer Review: A community of founders facing the same regulatory and technical hurdles.

"It allowed me to accomplish things I definitely would not have if I never heard of you guys," says Max.

 

 

Want to build like Max?

For Founders: If you are building the next big thing in sports tech, you don't have to do it alone. Check out the Breakaway Accelerator for mentorship, perks, and a community that gets it.

For Builders: Need reliable sports data that won’t bankrupt your runway? DataFeeds powers the startups that are changing the game.