Dabble: How Jon Robin Built a Social Sports Betting App From $0 to $150M in Revenue in Four Years

October 12, 2026

TL;DR: Dabble is an Australian sports betting app built like a social network: you follow other punters, see their bets in a feed, and copy them with one tap. It was founded in May 2020 by brothers Jon Robin and Dave Robin, with Scott Hutchens as CTO, as of an October 2026 web search. As Jon shared on The Product Market Fit Show, Dabble launched in July 2021, did about $10 million in revenue in its first full year, about $30 million in its second, about $75 million in its third, and was tracking toward $150 million to $175 million in its fourth, on roughly $1 billion to $1.2 billion in bets and fantasy entries. The one-line story: it looked like an overnight success, but Jon had spent seven years in sports betting and had already built the marketing machine that filled the app on day one.

What does Dabble do?

Dabble is a betting app with a social layer. In Australia it is a licensed sports bookmaker. In the US it is a different product: a daily fantasy sports app.

Jon's starting point was that betting apps still felt like the paper ticket you got from a bookmaker at the racetrack. You place a bet against the house, and if it loses, it disappears.

"And it didn't feel like sports betting had made it into the 2010s or the 2020s with a modernized version of what this user experience could be." — Jon Robin, Dabble

So Dabble borrowed from social media. Every user has a profile. People can follow you and search for you. Your bets show up in your followers' feeds, where they can comment on them or copy them. You can set your profile to private if you don't want people seeing your bets.

"So when you download, Dabble and, and create an account, it feels just as much like you're signing up to Twitter as it does signing up to fans, your DraftKings, you create a profile, people can follow you, they can search for your profile on the app, you can follow other people." — Jon Robin, Dabble

Jon said the team studied eToro, which had already made stock trading social, and pointed to apps like Strava as proof that most categories get a social layer sooner or later.

The US product is a separate business with its own rules:

"It's actually a daily fantasy sports app in the US. It's not a sports betting app." — Jon Robin, Dabble

As of an October 2026 web search, Dabble launched in the US in late 2023 and competes in pick'em style fantasy contests against PrizePicks and Underdog. It also received a UK Gambling Commission licence in April 2025 and went live in the UK in June 2025, according to trade press reports.

Who founded Dabble?

Dabble was founded in May 2020 by brothers Jon and Dave Robin, together with Scott Hutchens as CTO, as of an October 2026 web search. Tom Rundle, who had earlier built the Australian social wagering platform TopBetta and served as COO at PointsBet, joined as CEO in October 2020 and still leads the company.

Jon's path into betting started at 18. In Australia, he said, most people open a betting account on their 18th birthday. He was not good at it.

He started university in 2013, studying accounting. In 2014, at 19, he began posting betting tips on Facebook pages. That is how he found affiliate marketing: betting companies paid him a commission for every customer he referred. It started as a side hustle. Around age 23 or 24, he quit his accounting job to run it full time. His brother quit his job in 2018 and joined him.

Key stat: as he shared on the show, the affiliate business was doing "a couple million dollars of revenue a year" by 2020, fully bootstrapped, with a couple of staff.

Then Covid hit. Sports shut down, and one of their biggest clients, a betting company they sent customers to, disappeared in a merger. Jon said they had a choice: leave the industry or go all in on building their own app. They chose the app.

Neither brother could build software. So they called Scott, a former CTO at a bookmaker, and talked him out of a well-paid job in the middle of lockdown. Jon said Scott was still leading the tech team four and a half years later.

How much has Dabble raised?

Dabble has raised relatively little for its size.

From the episode:

As Jon shared on the show, the brothers self-funded the first costs: the licence application, legal fees and the start of the tech build.
After about 12 months of building, Dabble raised its seed round. In Jon's words: "We raised 1.5 at about 7 million pre-money."
In the intro, Pablo said Dabble had raised roughly $20 million in total. That figure comes from the episode and was not independently confirmed.

"We raised 1.5 at about 7 million pre-money. Still pretty good pre-revenue all things considered." — Jon Robin, Dabble

Verified as of October 2026 (ASX announcement and trade press):

October 2022: Tabcorp invested A$33 million for a 20% stake on a fully diluted basis, which valued Dabble at about A$165 million. Tabcorp, which runs Australia's TAB, also got a board seat. At the time, Dabble had more than 150,000 customers and annualised revenue of about A$47 million, based on the June 2022 quarter.
Other backers include Tim Heath's Yolo Investments, an early investor. As of September 2025, the founder group held close to 50% of the company, according to Earnings+More.
Dabble reached break-even in 2024 and turned profitable in its 2025 financial year (to June 2025). Tabcorp booked a share of Dabble's profit for the first time that year. Reported FY25 revenue was above A$260 million, though sources differ on the exact figure.
Dabble has said it is exploring a possible IPO. As of October 2026, no listing had been announced.

Key stat: as of October 2022, Dabble's last disclosed valuation was about A$165 million, set by Tabcorp's investment.

The 15-month build and the $3 million bet

The first surprise was how long it took to go live. Jon and Dave thought an MVP would take three or four months. Scott guessed closer to six. It took 15, from May 2020 to July 2021.

Two things slow down any betting app. The first is the licence. In Australia you cannot publish a betting app without a bookmaker's licence.

Key stat: as he shared on the show, the licence took nine months and cost about $250,000 start to finish, including legal fees.

Most of the delay came from tiny regulatory requirements. Jon gave examples: monthly customer statements had to use 24-hour time, show the dollar sign in some places and not others, and go to four decimal places. They went back and forth with the regulator for months.

The second is the betting platform itself: accepting bets, paying them out, and managing risk. Early on, Scott decided to build that platform in-house instead of buying a white-label system. Jon called it "the biggest decision that we're ever gonna make that we probably didn't realize at the time."

Risk management got a real test a few months after launch. During the Spring Carnival, Australia's big horse racing season, one seven-leg parlay at odds of 300 kept showing up in people's feeds. About 1,500 users copied it. The first five legs won.

Key stat: as he shared on the show, the team worked out that if the bet hit, Dabble owed about $3 million, with roughly $2 million in the bank.

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"Thankfully the sixth leg lost and the seventh leg actually won. But, yeah, we got outta jail." — Jon Robin, Dabble

The lesson was specific to social betting. Copying turns one bet into a crowd. Dabble also limited stake sizes early on and relied on the sheer number of events to spread its risk. Jon said the app was built for people placing $5, $10 and $20 bets, not $5,000 ones.

How Dabble found product-market fit

Dabble launched in July 2021. For two weeks, before the App Store approved it, only a few invited testers could bet. Jon said it was 10 to 20 people a day.

Then it went live in the App Store, and a couple of thousand customers arrived almost at once. Some were fans. Some were people who wait for every new betting app, hoping to grab a welcome bonus or exploit an operator that has not figured out its systems yet.

Most of the first customers came from the affiliate business the brothers had built. It still ran independently, and Dabble had a below-market deal with it. Its social pages had a few hundred thousand followers, and word of mouth did the rest.

The timing was forced. Dabble had planned to launch in March and ramp up slowly before September, when Australia's horse racing carnival and the AFL and NRL finals all land at once. Instead it had a few weeks to get ready.

Key stat: as he shared on the show, by the end of 2021, about four months in, roughly 50,000 people had registered and maybe 20,000 to 30,000 were actually betting.

Jon did not count that as product-market fit. In betting, he said, you can buy growth with bonuses, because you are handing people money. The real test is whether customers stay long enough to be worth what you paid to get them.

"But for me, true product market fit can only really come in this space when the unit economics stack up and the customers and the lifetime value of the customer look like they're gonna be higher than the customer acquisition cost." — Jon Robin, Dabble

He said that happened about 12 months after launch.

The revenue numbers he shared on the show back that up. Dabble runs a July to June financial year. Revenue here is bets taken minus winnings paid out.

FY2022 (first full year): about $10 million
FY2023: about $30 million
FY2024: about $75 million, with the jump driven by the US launch
FY2025 (in progress at recording): expected to be $150 million to $175 million

Key stat: as Pablo summarised on the show, Dabble had about 140 employees and was roughly cash flow break-even at the time of the interview.

Even with the early rush, Jon did not step back from customers:

"But don't get me wrong, like August 2021, I was still texting every new customer that signed off, I was calling people that would leave a negative app store review." — Jon Robin, Dabble

Key lessons from Jon Robin's playbook

1. Research mode can last years, and that's fine. Jon put his research phase at seven years, from age 19 to 26. He learned the customer as a bettor and the market as an affiliate before building anything. From the outside the launch looked easy. It wasn't. 2. Own your distribution before you launch. The affiliate business, with social pages followed by a few hundred thousand people, gave Dabble its first few thousand customers on day one. Most founders launch to silence. Dabble launched to a crowd. 3. Bring a familiar pattern into a stale category. Dabble did not invent social feeds or copy-trading. It took what worked on Twitter, eToro and Strava and applied it to a product that still felt like a paper ticket. 4. Define product-market fit by unit economics, not signups. In a market where bonuses can fake growth, Jon waited until customer lifetime value beat acquisition cost before calling it. 5. Know the risks your own features create. Copy-betting was the core feature, and it nearly produced a $3 million payout. Stake limits and diversification kept a lucky streak from becoming fatal.

His advice to his younger self was about attitude:

"I just don't take no for an answer. I don't accept that something can't be done." — Jon Robin, Dabble

For more on growing big without raising big, see the capital efficiency metrics that matter, how Super.com reached $150M in revenue after a pivot, and how Flo Health built a consumer app to $200M in revenue.

Listen to the full interview: His sports betting app went from $0 to $10M ARR in a year, and to $150M ARR in 4.

FAQ: Dabble

Q: What is Dabble? A: Dabble is a social betting app founded in Australia in 2020. Users follow other bettors, see their bets in a feed, comment on them and copy them. It is a licensed sportsbook in Australia, a daily fantasy sports app in the US (since late 2023), and launched in the UK in June 2025.

Q: Who founded Dabble? A: Brothers Jon and Dave Robin founded Dabble in May 2020, with Scott Hutchens as CTO. Before Dabble, the brothers ran a sports betting affiliate marketing business.

Q: Who is the CEO of Dabble? A: Tom Rundle has been CEO since October 2020. He previously built the social wagering platform TopBetta and was COO at PointsBet.

Q: How much funding has Dabble raised? A: Jon said on the show that Dabble raised a $1.5 million seed round at about a $7 million pre-money valuation. In October 2022, Tabcorp invested A$33 million for a 20% stake, valuing Dabble at about A$165 million. Yolo Investments was an early backer.

Q: Is Dabble profitable? A: Yes. Dabble reached break-even in 2024 and reported its first profitable financial year in FY25 (to June 2025), as disclosed through Tabcorp's FY25 reporting.

Sources: Listen to the Full Founder Story

Jon Robin, Co-Founder of Dabble — former sports betting affiliate marketer who spent seven years in the industry before building a social betting app that did $10 million in revenue in its first year.