Earlier this year, Lucra Sports founder and CEO Dylan Robbins did something that no one else has ever done.
He landed famed public investor Cathie Wood and her ARK Invest Venture Fund as a lead in a startup fundraising round.
Lucra announced last month that it raised a $20 million Series B, led by the ARK fund, with participation from several other VCs. Robbins attracted ARK even though the fund had previously gotten badly burned on a similar eSports company: Skillz, a skill-based gaming platform in which the fund invested heavily before divesting at a loss.
On top of that, Dylan landed this big fish as an investor even though his company is not in the one area that all VCs are currently chasing: AI.
Robbins told us there were two secrets in how he landed a big-name investor against such odds:
