Why GAGE exists
Sports knowledge is real. Most fans can call a Tatum scoring night, a Jokic rebounding clinic, or a Caleb Williams pocket-collapse before tip-off. But the only way to put money behind that knowledge has been the sportsbook — and the sportsbook is engineered to take it.
GAGE flips that. Fans predict player stats on the same lines as everyone else. No house. No vig. The fan with the best read wins. The sport stays the sport.
Who built it
I'm Michael Fiore. I live in Cincinnati, OH with my wife and son, second kid on the way. I'm a non-developer founder who has spent ten years building toward this. I sketch product specs in Figma, write copy in plain text, and trust the engineers I work with to ship the actual code.
I'm a Sigma Chi brother, a golfer, and someone who can't watch a Bengals game without arguing about Joe Burrow's third-down completion rate. That last part is the whole reason this exists.
How it's built
GAGE is seedstrapped. $36K of founder capital plus $68K from Rip Krehbiel for 15% equity. We are converting from LLC to C-Corp for QSBS tax benefits. No VCs. No board seats. Slow on purpose.
The product is a Flutter app over a FastAPI backend, with Firebase handling auth and social. Live sports right now are NBA and NHL. MLB next.
What we believe
Sports fans deserve a way to compete on knowledge that isn't gambling. Under-21 fans deserve a way to put skin in the game that isn't illegal. And a kid in a Cincinnati group chat who calls every player line correctly should have something to show for it besides bragging rights.
If you want the long version, the blog is where I work out loud. If you want to know the product, the home page is the fastest read.