Betable, a site that lets web users create their own bets for people to wager against, has attracted a $3 million first-round venture funding led by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis’ Atomico VC house.
It’s not the first site in the social betting space, which includes Smarkets, Pikum (deceased) and Bragster.
In Betable’s model, bet creators get 30 percent of the money people wager on their bet – so there’s plenty of incentive to create buzzy bets. This money is collected upfront from betters.
Atomico is placing founding Skype chief strategy officer Geoffrey Prentice, whom it says negotiated Skype’s sale to eBay (NSDQ: EBAY), on Betable’s board.
Betable was founded by former venture capitalist Christopher Griffin, who has created this bet on whether Nokia will dump its CEO, joined by former Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) software developer Amit Kumar and former Friendster engineering VP Jeff Winner.
For now, it’s only taking bets in the UK.
Betable’s supplied no metrics on how popular it currently is. Some of the technology, when tested, was a bit hit ‘n miss.
Want to try my bet on whether Mark Zuckerberg will still be Facebook CEO this time next year?