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The pitch trick that helped an eSports startup raise $20M when VCs only wanted AI Julie Bort 8:00 AM PDT · May 25, 2026 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.
Lucra offers white-label interactive gaming competitions as a novel kind of loyalty program for businesses that serve consumers. Rather than, say, earning points toward a coupon, Lucra’s clients offer online tournaments for prizes, or supports friendly wagers between their customers on who will win games. Its customers include Five Iron Golf, Dave & Buster’s, and Chess King.
Robbins told us there were two secrets in how he landed a big-name investor against such odds:
1. Be friendly to everyone, anywhere because you never know when a casual conversation will turn into your major investor.
2. Lead your pitch with AI even if you aren’t a famed AI scientist and aren’t building models, agents, or anything AI.
To the first point, the seeds to Lucra’s fundraising journey began when Robbins was playing darts in a New York bar. He met another guy at the dartboard, and they enjoyed a few games together.
“Six months later, we ran into each other at the bar again. The same darts bar. It’s like, ‘Good to see you. How’s it going?’ And we got to talking and I asked him what he did for work. And he told me he worked at ARK,” Robbins recalled.
Robbins told him about Lucra and the contact introduced him to the investment team at ARK, which wound up writing a small check in his Series A round.
“My first piece of advice on all of this is you never know who you’re talking to. Just go around, be nice, meet people, have fun,” Robbins says. Let that lead to good conversations, which will lead to introductions, he said.
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