---
date: 2015-05-01
type: ship
title: BetBull
slug: betbull
project: BetBull
kicker: MVP for a London-based sports betting startup that helped close $80M+ in funding.
excerpt: Designed the core product flows and the investor-facing prototypes that demonstrated where the product could go. Contributed to $80M+ in funding closure and strong early retention after launch.
cover: /assets/covers/hero-betbull.webp
palette:
  accent: "#2D5240"
  source:
    brand: "Pelikan Edelstein"
    name: "Aventurine"
  role: Senior Product Designer
  pull: An MVP isn't a small product. It's a product with the right things missing.
tags: [consumer, betting, mvp, 0-to-1]
---

BetBull was a London-based sports betting startup. I joined to design the MVP. Both the production product real users would bet on, and the future-facing prototypes investors needed to see to fund the next chapter.

## Context

The category was crowded with established operators competing on odds, bonuses, and acquisition cost. The bet was that there was room for a product that competed on UX instead. A betting experience that respected the user's intelligence and made the workflow legible. That positioning had to be made visible in two places at once: in the actual MVP, and in the pitch.

## What I designed

Core product flows for the MVP: the bet construction, slip, settlement, and account surfaces that handled the actual workflow at scale. Alongside them, investor-facing prototypes that showed where the product could go beyond the MVP, framed for narrative weight rather than build-readiness.

## The trade-off

The risk of designing in two layers is that prototype polish drifts into the production scope. Investors react to ambition; users react to friction. We held the line: the MVP scope stayed disciplined and shipped on time, while the prototype track stayed clearly forward-looking and was used only in the pitch context. Two design tracks running in parallel without contaminating each other.

## What it changed

Contributed to $80M+ in funding closure. Strong early retention after launch. Competing on legibility and pace rather than odds was readable to users in the metrics that mattered most for the category.

## Role

Senior Product Designer. Owned the MVP product flows and the investor-facing prototype track that ran alongside them.