Trent Hoerr, CEO of BullRush, was recently interviewed by Benzinga.
BullRush is a new sort of competitive gamified trading platform, and the company says it is the first of its kind. The platform blends fantasy sports and trading into a gamified interactive competition. Participants from around the world compete against each other in a variety of trading competitions, trivia tournaments and challenges for cash and other big prizes – you can even create your own! Mr. Hoerr spoke to the unique aspects of BullRush and its rapid user growth.
BullRush is a new sort of competitive gamified trading platform, and the company says it is the first of its kind. The platform blends fantasy sports and trading into a gamified interactive competition. Participants from around the world compete against each other in a variety of trading competitions, trivia tournaments and challenges for cash and other big prizes – you can even create your own! Mr. Hoerr spoke to the unique aspects of BullRush and its rapid user growth.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hey, Zingers, it's Dan Leach, and I'm really excited to welcome in the CEO of Bulrush,
00:06Trent Hare.
00:08Great to see you, Trent.
00:09Yeah, great to see you too, Dan.
00:10Thanks for having me on.
00:11Well, it's the honor and pleasure is all mine, my friend.
00:14Let's talk about Bulrush.
00:15Fascinating company.
00:16Give us an overview.
00:17Yeah, thanks for that.
00:19So Bulrush is the first ever paid trading competition platform.
00:23So it's similar to poker tournament where people pay an entry fee to join, and then
00:26the best traders at the end of the competition receive the prizes, the cash prizes.
00:31And so we do daily, weekly, month-long trading competitions.
00:35We even do news events.
00:36So on Friday, Nonfarm Payroll is coming up, and we'll do an hour-long trading competition
00:41during that news event to figure out who the best news trader is.
00:45And so lots of fun, excitement, trading competitions.
00:47But it's for people that want to come in and compete against others to see how they stack
00:51up against their fellow traders, and obviously win some cash along the way.
00:55Yeah, who doesn't love that?
00:56And listen, these are two things that I love, but I want to know what it means to blend
00:59fantasy sports and gamified trading.
01:03Yeah.
01:04So trading competitions have been around forever.
01:06So typically when you think about them, you think about a broker or some other business
01:12doing it as a lead generation tool to go and sell you some other product.
01:17A broker's a good example of that, where they will run a trading competition, and then at
01:23the end of it, they'll give you $1,000 or 500 bucks into your stock brokerage account.
01:29Where with Bullrush, the entire concept is these trading competitions where people come
01:33in every single day to compete against others.
01:36And so as part of that, to help keep that engagement up, we wanted to really gamify
01:40that experience.
01:42So we put a lot of experience points in there.
01:44We put daily trivia questions that people can go answer to gain points.
01:47And we put a lot of other of these features that really look to gamify it and sort of
01:52blend that sports, e-gaming, trading, gambling, for lack of a better word, all into this
01:59one good user experience.
02:01Yeah.
02:02Sign me up.
02:03It sounds fantastic to me.
02:04Let's talk about what products you can trade, Trent.
02:07Yeah.
02:08So we can trade everything except for stocks right now.
02:11Thankfully, though, I just got the word that we can start offering free trading competitions
02:16on stocks.
02:17We're still working on the paid entry, but we will be rolling out stocks soon.
02:21So what that means is you can trade cryptos is a big one.
02:24We run a lot of crypto competitions.
02:26We do Bitcoin specific competitions.
02:28We do FX, a foreign exchange competitions.
02:31We do indice trading competitions.
02:33So who is the best NASDAQ trader?
02:36We do metals competitions.
02:37So who's the best gold or silver trader?
02:40And so we do every single asset class and stocks are getting rolled out here very shortly,
02:45which I'm really excited about.
02:47That was one of the big things that came out of the Benzinga event that you and I both
02:50attended here a couple of weeks ago, where, you know, everybody's asking if we do stocks,
02:55we do stocks.
02:56And what I did was I came back, I sat down with our legal team.
03:00They went and looked at everything.
03:02And it seems like we're going to be able to roll that out as a free version here in the
03:05coming weeks.
03:06And then we'll start doing paid competitions here probably early next year.
03:09Yeah.
03:10And I was fascinated by you at the Benzinga event and I am as well now.
03:14And obviously, I know how the platform is unique, but let's talk about that and what
03:18kind of competition is out there and how do you guys stand out?
03:21Yeah.
03:22So again, there's nobody else out there that does the trading competitions exactly how
03:26we do them.
03:27Everybody else that runs them, runs them as a lead generation tool where they bring you
03:32in with a competition and it's usually free entry, it's always free entry.
03:37And they come in and once you trade, if you do well, you will then go get some sort of
03:42product that they have to sell you.
03:45Or even if you don't win, they're going to start marketing to you and trying to sell
03:48you their other product because the whole purpose of them running that competition was
03:52the lead generation side of things.
03:54Nobody else and nobody to this day does these paid entry trading competitions.
04:00That's the sole focus of the business.
04:03And so we're the first to ever do it.
04:06We hope to be the first and only to ever do it.
04:08Obviously, there'll be competitors that pop up, but we always welcome competition.
04:12I think the product that we built really stands out.
04:15The praise has been really good so far.
04:18We're almost at 32,000 users in the platform and just under five months since running.
04:25And so everybody really enjoys it.
04:27The uptake has been really big.
04:29Those are great numbers.
04:30And let's talk about the user engagement trend.
04:32What's it been like?
04:33Do you see a lot of repeat players?
04:35And if so, why are they coming back?
04:37Yeah.
04:38So yes, the answer is yes.
04:40You see people join multiple competitions.
04:42I gave a stat yesterday.
04:44We had somebody that joined over 40 competitions and they never won a prize until the 40th
04:51competition.
04:52They finally won and they ended up winning.
04:53I think it was $50 in the system.
04:55So it wasn't a ton of money, but it was just one of those situations where, hey, they kept
05:00competing and they kept really going and trying.
05:02And eventually there was that carrot at the end of the road, if you will.
05:07But the prizes are big.
05:08People come back every day for the prizes where we give anywhere from free entry into
05:12one of the paid entry competitions as part of our daily competitions or upwards of $10,000
05:17has been the biggest prize pool.
05:18But we look forward to continue to increase that prize pool.
05:22And in the coming days and weeks and months, we're looking to $25,000, $50,000, $100,000
05:28for these competitions.
05:29It just is a determination of how many people join.
05:33The prize pool just keeps growing.
05:34And so we just take a small percentage of the fee to enter and the rest gets added to
05:39that prize pool.
05:40So, you know, let's put it in perspective.
05:43If it's $25 to enter and you get a thousand people, there's a $25,000 prize pool there
05:49that's up for grabs.
05:50I love it.
05:51Like I said, a very exciting times for you guys at Bulrush and let's talk Trent about
05:56the vision long-term for Bulrush.
05:58Yeah.
05:59So vision long-term, again, increasing the prize pool.
06:01So the more users that come in and are part of the system, the larger those prize pools
06:06are going to get.
06:07I would love one day when we have a million dollar prize pool for our weekly competitions.
06:11I think that would be really fascinating.
06:12And I think you'd get obviously a lot of people to go join those.
06:16But that is obviously the long-term goal is to do that.
06:19We are also building a lot of additional user engagement tools in there in different styles
06:24of competitions.
06:25One that we're launching later this month is our trivia competition.
06:29So not everybody wants to go and trade against others, but if you're like me, I know a lot
06:35about trading.
06:36I'm a horrible trader these days.
06:37I'll be the first to admit it.
06:38I just don't have the time to dedicate it.
06:40It's just like anything else.
06:41It's a skill.
06:42And if you don't use it, you lose it.
06:45And I would say I fit in that category from a trading perspective, but I still retain
06:49all this knowledge about the industry, about trading.
06:52And so we are going to launch trading trivia competitions here in about three weeks.
06:57They're going to roll out.
06:58They were announced later this week and then rolled out mid-December.
07:02And what that'll be, it'll be really exciting where you come in and you compete against
07:06others in trivia questions.
07:07And then obviously the best people will get prizes and cash and other rewards inside of
07:12there.
07:13And so that's a big feature that we're rolling out here soon.
07:15And then looking into next year, it'll be more lead engagement.
07:19One of the features that will come out next year is giving in players the ability to create
07:25their own competitions.
07:27So the way our system works right now is we as Bullrush determine, okay, which competition
07:32we're going to run each month.
07:34But next year, we're going to give that to the end user where you, if you want to go
07:38set up with your friends and your family, you can go set up a private competition and
07:42then go and trade and see who the best trader in your family is or your network is.
07:47And so that's a feature that'll get rolled out early next year.
07:49And so from our perspective, we're always improving the system.
07:53We're always looking to continue to advance the features and really be at the forefront
07:57of the gamified trading experience in this industry, because I'm a firm believer that
08:02gamification is a net benefit to the trading industry.
08:06I think it really does help keep people engaged.
08:08I think it helps people learn and then ultimately stick around until they can become profitable
08:13because it's like anything else, you're not going to be an expert from day one.
08:16You need to give yourself time to adapt and evolve and learn it over weeks, months, years
08:23until you're actually become successful at it.
08:26Very exciting times ahead for Bullrush.
08:28It's been a true pleasure talking to you with you Trent.
08:31Thanks so much for your time today.
08:32Yeah.
08:33Thanks for having me on Dan.
08:34It's great to talk to you.