Trent Hoerr, CEO of BullRush was recently a guest on Benzinga's All-Access. BullRush is a competitive gamified trading platform, blending fantasy sports and trading into a gamified interactive trading competition. Participants from around the world compete against each other in a variety of trading competitions that center on CFD, Forex, and other securities as well as trivia tournaments and challenges.
The platform rapidly gained traction after its beta release on July 10, gaining 13,700 traders from over 150 countries.
The platform rapidly gained traction after its beta release on July 10, gaining 13,700 traders from over 150 countries.
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00:00Let's get into Bullrush, Trent.
00:06So we've heard Bullrush runs CFD, crypto and Forex trading competitions, but we'd love
00:13to hear a high level overview from you about the company and its goals.
00:17Could you tell us more?
00:18Yeah, certainly.
00:19So Bullrush was an idea I had about three and a half years ago.
00:23It really started coming to fruition about two years ago when we went through the whole
00:27legal process to make sure we're authorized to legally operate here in the United States.
00:32I'm thankful to say we got approved in 42 of the U.S. states and about 150 countries worldwide.
00:37We fit underneath of daily fantasy sports.
00:40And so, that is really what we're all about, is the competition, the sports element.
00:46We think that trading isn't just for traders.
00:49We think there's a broader audience out there of people that would be interested in the style of product.
00:55But really, what Bullrush is, is it is competitions that are based on either trading or even trivia competitions.
01:03I don't know if you ever played the game HQ back in the day, but we have a similar concept
01:07inside of Bullrush where people join, they try to answer trivia questions around trading,
01:13and the faster they answer and the more they get correct, that deems the winner of the competition.
01:19Yeah, of course.
01:21HQ was, that was a lot of fun.
01:23Free money if you could do well in the trivia.
01:25Scott Rogowski, I still remember the host.
01:27He did a great job, actually.
01:29I wonder what he's up to now.
01:31And that's interesting.
01:33You mentioned, I guess, the legal process, because it seems like such a, I don't want to say legal gray area,
01:39but there's so many moving parts right now with certain states legalizing gambling.
01:44And for example, the PrizePicks app is daily fantasy sports gambling that can still operate
01:52in states that haven't quite legalized actual sports gambling yet.
01:56So I can see how that would be probably quite a complicated and convoluted process,
02:01getting all those legal approvals there.
02:05Yep. Thankfully, we have a very good set of in-house lawyers as well as externally.
02:09And we went through a whole process of Bullrush and trading competitions in general are a game of skill,
02:19not a game of luck.
02:21And the reason why the best traders always are profitable or similar to a poker tournament,
02:25the best poker players generally win is because it's a skill-based game.
02:29It's not based off of luck or chance.
02:31Got it.
02:33So just taking a look under the whole umbrella, what exactly is gamified trading?
02:39Yeah, that's a great question.
02:41So gamified trading, we're far past the day that probably your father or my father phoned in a broker
02:49to do their stock trades, paid $75 a click.
02:55Nowadays, it's much more interactive than that.
02:57And so inside of the Bullrush system, we have a lot of gamified elements
03:01that are coming over from the Call of Duties, the Halos of the world,
03:07where you earn experience points by just interacting with the system.
03:11Obviously, the more difficult the task, the higher amount of points you get.
03:15You get badges when you have certain achievements.
03:18You get certificates when you win.
03:20And so there's a lot of gamified elements inside of the platform to really help with that overall user experience
03:26and help with the engagement to make sure that's fun and exciting.
03:29Because along with the competition side of Bullrush, we also want it to be fun for people.
03:34We want them to come back and constantly be utilizing the platform to help grow as a trader,
03:40as well as hopefully win some money if they win a competition.
03:44Got it. And then, Trent, I know you guys recently launched the actual platform,
03:48of course, after getting through the legal process.
03:52So congrats on the launch. How did the launch go?
03:56Yeah, thanks for that. And it far surpassed what we thought it would.
04:00So when we initially announced our September 9th competition as our kickoff,
04:04we announced it as the 10K launch competition because we thought we'd have 10,000 users.
04:10In the last eight weeks, I'm happy to say we have over 15,000 users that have joined the platform.
04:15So we're far surpassed what we would even hope for. And we just see it growing from there.
04:20Our goal before the end of the year is to have 50,000 users on the platform.
04:24And we think it's very achievable. There's been a tremendous uptake in what we do.
04:29And it's just an acknowledgement of putting it out there and that many people coming and subscribing so quickly.
04:34That's awesome. What features of the platform are unique?
04:38What can I do on Bullrush that I can't go do on Robinhood?
04:42Yeah, certainly. So we're the first, to the best of my knowledge,
04:45we're the first ever legally authorized trading competition platform where people pay an entry fee into the competition.
04:52And then we collect a rake as the house. The rest gets distributed in prizes.
04:56I'm pretty sure we're the first ever legally, if not the first ever to do that.
05:00A lot of firms do free competitions as lead generation tools to their overall business.
05:06Where our entire business is competition, trading competitions, trading trivia competitions, etc.
05:13So that's really the key and core focus of what we do.
05:17Other elements that we have inside of the platform that really go back to the gamification is the daily trivia questions.
05:23So if you're learning, you're wanting to advance your trading knowledge and sort of test your skills,
05:28you can log in every day to answer a trivia question to gain points and experience inside the system that you can then go utilize inside of our platform.
05:36Got it. And then I understand one aspect that sets Bullrush apart from other trading competitions you might find,
05:43is its focus on different rules that maintain the integrity of the experience and discourage YOLO trading.
05:50What do you mean by this? And can you give some examples?
05:53Because I know from experience that in some trading competitions you go in, like paper trading competitions,
05:57you're almost incentivized to try to hit a big lotto option winner because that's going to be the only way you're going to win.
06:04So how does Bullrush kind of, I guess, focus on different rules that discourage that?
06:10Yeah. Great question again. You're exactly right.
06:15Most competitions, because they're free and they're giving away a large prize, people have a tendency to go YOLO or gamble on their trading.
06:23Our purpose is we want people to take this seriously and we want realistic expectations and returns to be inside the market.
06:31And so we combat YOLO in a few different ways.
06:34The first is we have a concept called dynamic leverage, where every week we rebalance the leverage available in every product
06:42based on the average true range or ATR of those products over the given week.
06:46So volatility increases, the leverage goes down and vice versa, so that no matter which product you're trading,
06:53you have an equal opportunity for success or to win that competition. That's one way.
06:58The second way is we have rules associated with the program.
07:01So we have daily loss limits, we have max loss limits, we have maximum position sizes.
07:06Those are all features inside of there that really help to try to reduce YOLO and people just gambling on the platform just to have the biggest win.
07:17It's a challenging problem, though, to solve.
07:19And so we're constantly looking for feedback from our users.
07:23That was part of the reason why we launched beta, was to get a lot of that feedback early on.
07:27To put that in perspective, when we first launched, we had 100 to 1 leverage on the platform.
07:31That is now down to 50 to 1 maximum, and most pairs are around 10 to 20,
07:37because most people in the system didn't like that other people were having YOLO trades and returning 50, 100% a day, which is not realistic.
07:46Got it. And you mentioned it earlier. It sounds like this might be my favorite part of it, the trivia.
07:52The trivia, the trading trivia challenge. What exactly does that entail?
07:56I know you mentioned kind of maybe some daily questions, but give me an overview of the trivia aspect of it.
08:02Yeah, certainly. So there's two elements of the trivia that we have in there right now, and there's a third one coming towards the end of the year.
08:08The first is we have a daily trivia question where you can log in and every day you can answer a trivia question.
08:15And if you get it right, you get experience points.
08:17Those experience points are then used throughout the system for a variety of different things.
08:22The second is we have competitions that are based solely on trivia.
08:27So imagine there's 20 questions and they're all trading related.
08:31And the person that answers the most correct, the fastest, is deemed the winner of that competition.
08:37And so those will have cash prizes to enter. So we'll do free ones to start, and then we'll do paid entry as it gains success and popularity.
08:46But there's always cash prizes inside the system if you go and you're one of the top competitors.
08:51And then in the future, we will have ongoing trivia where people can come in and just pick a category.
08:57You know, if you want to learn more about technical analysis, you want to learn more about fundamental,
09:01you can go in there and there'll be a list of questions that you can go answer to gain badges, certificates, experience points, etc.
09:08Just a fun, interactive way to go test your trading knowledge.
09:13Beautiful. Well, coming up on the clock here, Trent, I've just got a couple more questions for you.
09:17What trends are you seeing in the gamified trading space?
09:20Where do you hope the industry is in three years? And I'll throw this in there as well.
09:24Do you foresee other companies, maybe like a Robinhood, implementing more types of competitions?
09:32Or do you know firsthand, like, oh, they'd have a hard time doing that because of all the regulatory and legal hurdles?
09:38Yeah, I think brokerage firms will always run trading competitions, but they'll always do it in a free environment as an ancillary aspect of their business.
09:49So, they use it to generate leads to then go sell you to open up a brokerage account and trade on their platform.
09:55That's very different than Bullrush. Again, our core focus is running these trading competitions.
10:00So, I don't think they would enter into our space. If they did, competition is welcome.
10:05We're all about competition. The more, the merrier. I think we have an amazing product.
10:09And I think people will really gravitate towards our product over others that might try to pop up in this space.
10:16In terms of gamification trading, it's been a massive trend ever since probably 10 years ago.
10:22You saw a lot of crypto brokerage firms and crypto exchanges really start that trend.
10:27And it's just carried over into all asset classes from FX, CFDs, stocks, etc. You name it.
10:33Everybody's trying to gamify their platforms now because they saw the popularity that happened with the crypto side of things.
10:39Yeah, 100%. I mean, during COVID especially, everyone was just looking for a little bit of action somewhere, whether that be sports gambling.
10:48So, it's like, oh, let's go bet on these different crypto markets.
10:51So, it's interesting to see that industry come out of its infancy and now with legitimate companies like Bullrush and seeing how it develops.
11:01And again, in the future, I'm excited to see what you guys do and partake in some of the competitions.
11:08Yeah, no, thanks for that. We're excited to have you. See if you can be one of the winners.
11:12It's becoming more competitive as the more people join.
11:15Obviously, when we first started, it was a couple hundred people joining competitions.
11:19Now, our 10K launch has over 10,000 people registered.
11:22Got it. Well, yeah, I mean, that's the goal, to win. I'm not here just to have fun or to play, Trent.
11:29I'm going to go out there and I'm going to try to win.
11:30So, all right, guys, we've been on the line with Trent Hare, again, the CEO of Bullrush, which runs CFD, crypto, and Forex trading competitions.
11:39Go check out Bullrush if you'd like to learn more and partake in that trading trivia challenge, which sounds exciting as well.
11:46Trent, thanks for hopping on Benzinga's All Access with us today.
11:49Yeah, thanks, Aaron. Have a great day.