AI on your pitch deck? Standard stuff. Boring, really. Everyone’s got it.
So imagine this.
A founder just walked away with $20 million in funding from Cathie Wood’s ARKInvest. And they didn’t bother slapping that two-letter buzzword on their materials at all. The space was eSports gamification, loyalty, that kind of thing. Weirdly enough ARK had previously been burned by another player in that exact arena. So you have to wonder why the conversation started here in the first place.
Sometimes the quietest bets make the loudest noise.
Enter Lucra. Dylan Robbins, the founder and CEO, sat down with Julie Bort for a recent episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast to explain what’s going on. Lucra isn’t building some vague chatbot. They offer a white-label platform that turns simple, friendly competitions into serious loyalty programs. Who uses it? Golf courses. Arcades. Pickleball clubs. 🏓
It works.
People play. They come back. Brands love that. Robbins knows that ARK has history in this sector that isn’t entirely pretty, which makes this latest move all the more curious. Why double down on a space where the money maker had previously stumbled? Maybe he just believes in the mechanics. Maybe the rest of us are just too focused on the AI hype train.
The money is real though.
Twenty million. For loyalty apps. For pickleball. For things that happen on grass or concrete.
Is there anyone actually paying attention to what’s working versus what’s just shouting the loudest?
