Fill Landers
BANNED
- Jul 30, 2026
- 0
- 0
Initial estimates were at $120K. When we came out with a fully ready product, the actual budget was closer to $250K+.
irony is that frontend was not the reason why the budget became so large.
It was all that went around it: PAM, wallet logic, payments integration, KYC, game certification, reporting, fraud rules, QA, Devops and all that was needed to make all of them talk to each other.
But when you discover that software development is not the most expensive part of a business,
When after spending $250K on developing the casino, you have to spend another $100K-$150K on licensing, payment reserves, compliance and initial acquisition costs,
And therefore are facing $350K-$400K without any proof of product-market fit yet.
Time was underestimated as well. Initial estimates were 4-5 months, while actual time passed was closer to 9 months. It matters a lot as during these months you pay developers while getting close to no GGR.
Metric that would have helped us more would have been time to profitability of the first cohort.
For example, if CAC is $150 and an average first-year player contribution is $220, you don't have a huge margin to work with. Add payment costs, bonuses, affiliate commissions and retention spend, and a technically successful casino can still be a bad business.
If I did it again, I'd use one of the established casino software providers like NuxGame, KodeDice, SoftSwiss, EveryMatrix, etc. - and put our development budget into acquisition, CRM and product differentiation.
Building your own technology makes sense when the technology itself is your competitive advantage.
For a small casino, it usually isn't.
irony is that frontend was not the reason why the budget became so large.
It was all that went around it: PAM, wallet logic, payments integration, KYC, game certification, reporting, fraud rules, QA, Devops and all that was needed to make all of them talk to each other.
But when you discover that software development is not the most expensive part of a business,
When after spending $250K on developing the casino, you have to spend another $100K-$150K on licensing, payment reserves, compliance and initial acquisition costs,
And therefore are facing $350K-$400K without any proof of product-market fit yet.
Time was underestimated as well. Initial estimates were 4-5 months, while actual time passed was closer to 9 months. It matters a lot as during these months you pay developers while getting close to no GGR.
Metric that would have helped us more would have been time to profitability of the first cohort.
For example, if CAC is $150 and an average first-year player contribution is $220, you don't have a huge margin to work with. Add payment costs, bonuses, affiliate commissions and retention spend, and a technically successful casino can still be a bad business.
If I did it again, I'd use one of the established casino software providers like NuxGame, KodeDice, SoftSwiss, EveryMatrix, etc. - and put our development budget into acquisition, CRM and product differentiation.
Building your own technology makes sense when the technology itself is your competitive advantage.
For a small casino, it usually isn't.
