In this episode of the Knup Sports Show, host Ryan Knuppel interviews Hussain Naqi, the founder of Inside the Pocket. Inside the Pocket is a marketing platform that helps brands use free-to-play games to acquire, retain, and convert customers.
They offer a variety of games, including casino-style games, pick-style games, and trivia games. The platform is flexible and can be integrated into various industries, including betting operators, telecom operators, and hospitality companies.
Naqi discusses the company’s future plans, which include expanding into international markets and becoming the go-to platform for free-to-play and daily fantasy sports. He also shares his experience as an entrepreneur and offers advice for others starting their own businesses.
Listeners are encouraged to visit inside the pocket.io to learn more about the company and connect with Naqi.
Ryan Knuppel:
Hey, hey, hey. Sorry about that. Missed the video up. How’s everybody doing today? Ryan Knuppel, episode 212 of the New Sports Show. Thank you so much for being here, taking some time, listening to this show. However you’re consuming it, watching it, listening it, reading it, whatever you’re doing. We are just a couple weeks away from the big G two E event in Vegas. I hope to see many of you there. I’ve talked to many of you listeners and watchers that are going, please reach out if you haven’t already. Let’s set a time to at least say hello, right? We don’t have to have a big meeting, but at least say hello because it is always a difficult time once you get there trying to navigate and meet up. So let’s schedule a time and say hello. As always, we have another great guest here today. I’m super excited to dive into this interview and find out what’s going on with this guest and their project. So let’s not waste any more time and let’s dive right into today’s show. Today I have Hussain Naqi — Hussain is with Inside the Pocket. Hussain, how are you doing, my friend?
Hussain Naqi:
Well, man, how are you?
Ryan Knuppel:
I am doing well. It’s Thursday as the time of this recording, weeks just flying by. We got Thursday night football tonight for us here in the US that love to watch football every week, man. How are you?
Hussain Naqi:
I’m good, I’m good. I’ll be up to the wee hours watching tonight’s games as well. So haven’t grown up in Texas. It’s in my blood. I just can’t shake it. I love everything about football.
Ryan Knuppel:
I tell you what, that’s one thing I don’t envy about the European time zones, and if you’re a North American sports fan and you live in Europe, it’s like, whoa, I got to stay up till win to watch these games and it would be very difficult I think.
Hussain Naqi:
Yeah, man. No, it is pretty tough. Not going to lie, particularly my age, that is a longer recovery than it used to be, but hey, it’s all for a good cause. Look, when I was in the States, when I lived in the States, I’d be watching college football from starting game day through to call it midnight, something like that, one o’clock for the West Coast games, but now it sort of shifts five hours and I’m going to bed at five in the morning over here, so whatever it is, what it’s
Ryan Knuppel:
Enough around the sports we love, don’t we? That’s awesome. So you a Cowboy Cowboys fan then being from Texas or
Hussain Naqi:
That’s how I grew up. Certainly I’ve been in the industry for some time in the N F L. I still follow the Cowboys pretty closely. I used to work for the Jags, so they’ve somehow creeped into my sensitivities as well. I was with them for a lot of years, and so I’m sort of a, I wouldn’t say split allegiances, I’m probably more cowboys just my roots, and I don’t have any beyond my time in Jacksonville. I don’t have any throw tie to Florida, so I am a Cowboys fan for all my sins.
Ryan Knuppel:
Well, it’s finally time to, I mean, the Jags are finally making some noise actually this year. They’re a little bit struggling, but you know what? They’re at least making some noise. I know being the Jags fan over the last five to 10 years or however many has probably been a struggle. So anyway,
Hussain Naqi:
Yeah. Yeah, they’re a resilient fan base. That is for sure.
Ryan Knuppel:
Yeah, it’s fun atmosphere to go to a game there. I love going to games in Jacksonville a lot of good times. So anyway, let’s get on the right track here, Hussain. I’m excited to dive into yourself and inside the pocket as well. But first, tell me about you. You kind of started talking about already been in the industry for a while, but give us a background of your career history.
Hussain Naqi:
Yeah, thank you. So I’ve been in sports my entire career really. I started out out of college with the N F L and then went to the N C A there for a few years in their enforcement division and then went to graduate school in Chicago and after that went to go work for Major League Baseball. I was there with baseball for a couple of years and then was with Mark Lamping, who’s now the president of the Jags, but was with Mark, and we built MetLife stadium just outside of New York, New Jersey where the Jetson and Giants play. And then when Mark got the job as a president of the Jags, he brought me and one other colleague down to Jacksonville and we tried to make heads of tails of what Shot had bought in Jacksonville. It’s been awesome, really as I reflect on my time, I can’t believe I’ve been so lucky to have the jobs that I’ve had and had the experiences I’ve had. And then about two years ago now, a bit of a less than that, I decided to move to do my own thing and launch inside the pocket for a variety of reasons. And it’s been fun. I mean, it’s been starting your own business or starting my own business has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s pretty damn rewarding for sure.
Ryan Knuppel:
So I was going to say hardest but most rewarding. You took the words right out of my mouth there. That’s typically how it goes. It’s not always easy with a business, but it is rewarding when you see the fruits of your labor and you see things progressing and growing. So that’s amazing. Congrats on the great work history and just having experience with all those major leagues has to be eyeopening and just has to be rewarding in itself, I guess, just to know that you’ve been a part of these leagues and teams at a higher level. That’s really cool.
Hussain Naqi:
Yeah, I appreciate your kind words. Like I said, I’m beyond lucky. It’s been you sort of live a childhood dream in a lot of ways was obviously I’ve never athletic enough to play at a high level, and so for me to be involved in these sports that I absolutely love and adore and see the guys who I respect the heck out of both from a business perspective and from an athletic perspective, being able to be in their orbit has been just an incredible honor, to be honest.
Ryan Knuppel:
Amazing. So you spent a lot of time in sports, decided to start a company surrounding sports. Let’s talk a little bit about Inside the Pocket for the audience that may not know what you guys are up to, why don’t you give us the high level overview of what you guys are up to with Inside the Pocket?
Hussain Naqi:
So we’re a marketing platform for any brands that are looking to use games of any sort to acquire, retain, and convert customers. So if you think of casino style games or pick style games or scratch card games, whatever the mechanic is, trivia games, as long as it’s free to play, that’s our focus, free to play and skills-based games, we deploy a white label solution for those kinds of brands. So obviously our target market, the knee-jerk reaction is to think about betting operators and that free to play mechanism, but there’s equally no reason why we couldn’t. And we’re certainly having very fruitful conversations with telecom operators, with hospitality companies, restaurant chains, these kinds of things that are looking to think about how they can talk to customers differently and talk to customers in a way that is kind of focused on that particular demographic subset. So because we’re an aggregation platform, we’re very, very fortunate to have the faith of nearly 25 free to play and pay to play content providers. We have the best in the business agreed to on our platform, whether that’s the chalk lines of the world, the low sixes of the World, bounty Sports Thunder bite, the list goes on. We’re like I said, we’re really fortunate that we have the faith that they’ve put in us to be able to be on our platform and we can then pass that along to our business customers who can turn micro segment their customers and offer various gaming opportunities to them.
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Ryan Knuppel:
Yeah, that’s amazing. Customer acquisition is obviously the name of the game for businesses, trying to get people in the door and get people to do things with their brand. And so yeah, having creative ways within sports to really capture that audience is amazing. Let’s talk a little bit about some of the games where the fun is. Some of these games that you guys have out here, I’m pulling it up on the screen for those watching. I mean buzzer beat or Beat the Spread Millionaires wrote Survivors, some really cool games Survivor really stands out in my mind just because we’re in N F L season and everyone loves that whole mentality of Survivor. Talk about some of these games, I mean maybe a couple of them that are hot that people just talk a little bit about the game side of it.
Hussain Naqi:
So as a matter of fact, we, it’s funny, on the survivor side, we actually ran an industry focused survivor game and we’re down to just a few people left actually who survived I think the Jags loss this past weekend that put a wrench into few predictions, but we’ve had some really good luck with that. We’ve had some very good luck with some of our third party providers. You’ll see a company called Support X right in the middle there. We’ve had some good traction with those guys in Brazil. Actually a couple of operators have gone live with them. We’ve had some good millionaires. Row is sort of our pick six style game similar to what Skybet does here in the uk or Fox Bet did really well in the us. So the good thing about what we’re up to is that it really does depend on what a client wants. Some people would want a scratch card, some people want a pick six, some people will want a spin game, and whether it is our product or a third party product, there really isn’t anything that we can’t deploy, which is pretty nice,
Ryan Knuppel:
Man. I was out week one of Survivor, I lost on, I do this every week or every, I freaking picked the Minnesota Vikings to win week one and they fail me right away and I’m out of all my contests. I’m like, come on, this sucks.
Hussain Naqi:
It’s fun. I mean certainly I’m actually not a better, really, that’s not my thing, but when you’re in it, testing it as the owner and you have a prediction, it does add something, right? I mean it actually adds a neat little that otherwise have absolutely no interest in a particular game and you’re curious to see what’s happened because you picked that team. So that’s obviously, that’s obviously the point of the exercise.
Ryan Knuppel:
So let’s talk a little bit about how businesses would work with you in that process. I guess if there’s a brand that’s looking for creative ways to, or a brand or a company or whatever, looking for creative ways to bring people in the door and get some engagement, what’s that process to engage, you guys get working with you guys? How difficult is it? Just talk a little bit through that process of working with you guys.
Hussain Naqi:
Yeah, so I hope our clients would find that not a difficult process at all. Our last launch, we launched them in 10 days. They came to us and said we need something pretty fast. And we launched them in Brazil in 10 days. Our last integration with a content provider we did in three days. We started on a Tuesday and what’s live with them with a super cool product, which is, it’s called Snap Odds. You basically, it allows you to point your phone at a tv, it recognizes what you’re watching and we’ll pull up whatever messaging is related to that sporting event. That’s cool that you’re pointing at. It’s super cool. We did that integration in three days. So I’m hopeful that both our content providers and our clients find us very easy to work with.
Look, the typical use cases for us, let’s say in the bedding space is either, let’s say a standalone site. We’ve done that a few times and let’s say in jurisdictions, I mentioned Brazil earlier, like Brazil where it’s difficult to promote real muddy games on certain advertising platforms, whether that’s Facebook or Instagram, the meta platforms having a standalone site where you can drive customers to it to promote free to play games. That tends to be the mechanism in markets like that. There are other markets where, for instance, in South Africa we’re doing an integration. We are very fortunate to have been selected by Playtech to be a free to play provider for them. And so with the Playtech client in South Africa, we’re integrating directly into the Playtech platform on a platform to platform basis, and we’ll have the journey baked right into their sportsbook on sort of a banner ad or a tab or whatever it is, an iframe into the sports book. So the use cases we’re pretty flexible. So however it is that the client foresees the customer journey, we can accommodate that, whether that’s from a mobile perspective or web app, either one.
Ryan Knuppel:
Really cool, really cool. Sounds simple, sounds amazing. What’s the future look like for you guys? I mean, is it as simple as adding more games, adding more partners, adding more clients and continuing to have a great product? Sounds simple, right? But is as simple as that or are there big, big plans in the future for you guys?
Hussain Naqi:
I think for us, yes. I mean the short answer is yes. I think the good thing about what we’re up to is that we sort of look at content with a capital C. So that could be daily fantasy stuff. So I think there’s a lot of headroom in D F S outside of the us. I think for us, as markets mature outside of the us, US is, north America is a focus, but I think that there is probably a bigger opportunity sort of as moving into the next 3, 4, 5, 6 years outside of the us. You’re seeing that in a lot of Latin American markets. You’re seeing that as technology improves in Africa, you’re seeing that as advertising laws change in more mature markets like Europe, they’re going to need solutions like ours to either cut through the regulation or have as a conduit to their real money activities or indeed being able to diversify out of, for us, being able to diversify out of the betting space and moving more into sort of hospitality and non betting, non-gaming clients. For us, I think the nirvana would be to be considered sort of the operating system for free to play and daily fantasy platforms. And so we are the go-to space where if you want to choose a free to play proposition, you do a single integration with us and you get the entire marketplace of really, really cool stuff.
That aspiration seems to be materializing. It’s a long road, and that’s a big statement, I know that, but I think we are starting to see at least people buying into that idea and buying into that notion, that notion,
Ryan Knuppel:
Hussain Naqi of inside the pocket. Hussain, you seem like a very straightforward and humble guy. I love that. I’m always intrigued by people like yourself who, I mean you think back, how long has the company been going now? When did you start this? How many years?
Hussain Naqi:
So we incorporated and started building in 2020. We pushed live Live in November of last year.
Ryan Knuppel:
So I mean you’re talking a couple years in a year and you see with a product and you’re like, man, this is so polished and so good. And he seems like he has it all together. Talk about that journey as an entrepreneur and I don’t know, maybe give some either encouragement or advice to those. A lot of entrepreneurs and people trying to start up in the gaming space, iGaming betting, whatever you want to call it, fantasy sports reel, whatever we want to call it, right? There’s a lot of people trying to get something off the ground from a business side. I always like to pick people’s brains and just what’s some advice or something that you’ve learned along the way that maybe you can share with someone that could help them in their journey?
Hussain Naqi:
That’s a loaded,
Ryan Knuppel:
Loaded.
Hussain Naqi:
It’s loaded. Gosh, I don’t know if I’m even qualified to answer this question, but I’ll talk a little bit about what my personal journey has been. As I said, it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done easily. The hardest thing I’ve ever done. There are a few things that I would say. It’s really, really, really difficult to pick up out of a book or pick up out of a reading shoe dog. It is really hard to understand the first person element of running a business. It is incredibly lonely. It is a very, very lonely experience, particularly if you’re a sole founder. I’m a sole founder. I have really, really strong investors. I’m deeply, deeply fortunate for that and a great team. But at the end of the day, if something goes sideways, it’s my fault and it is my responsibility. And whether that is with the clients, whether that is with my team members, whether that is whoever it’s with, content partners, whatever, it’s my responsibility. And when you strike out on your own, that is part of the allure, right? That is pretty alluring. On the other hand, when you have no one to turn to or you’re just sort of sitting there like, oh my God, how am I going to get out of this corner? I’ve painted myself into that. That is tricky.
They talk about, then obviously you pick up whatever books you pick up and you start talking about and thinking about the actual running of the business. Cash is king, manage to cash, and that is a very, very, very difficult thing to do sometimes. And it feels like some days you’re playing whack-a-mole, you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul all these, whatever the cliche is. And that’s hard. That is hard. But you get through it and I think there is some, there’s certainly some real validity to the just keep your head down and push and push and push and hopefully the door opens.
Ryan Knuppel:
I can personally relate with a lot of that and hopefully you audience you can as well. And I really appreciate that insight there. I know I caught you off guard with the question, but I really appreciate that, just that insight coming from someone who started with nothing and really brought it to where you are today. Congrats on all the success with Inside the Pocket. Let’s finish up here with where can we find you, where can they get to inside the pocket? How can they get ahold of you? Are you available and things of that nature?
Hussain Naqi:
I am available 24 7 sadly, so of course I’m available on LinkedIn. Hussain Naqi, N A q i is my last name surname. For those outside of the us, our website, feel free to check it out inside the pocket.io. Always happy to have a conversation, always happy to just shoot the breeze and bounce the ideas off of, even if it’s not a sales or anything related, just want to talk sports, you want to talk about the business. Happy to learn from anybody who’s willing to share their insights with me. But yeah, we’re always open, always willing to brainstorm on solutions and more than happy to chat.
Ryan Knuppel:
Amazing. And I know you said just before this, you said you were heading to G two E in Las Vegas. I know I’ll be out there as well, so I’m looking forward to saying hello to you in person.
Hussain Naqi:
I look forward to it. I’ll be there. I’ll be the most blurry eyed guy there I’m sure, but it’ll be a lot of fun. Always great.
Ryan Knuppel:
Aren’t we all blurry eyed in Vegas? It feels like that is true.
Hussain Naqi:
That is true
Ryan Knuppel:
Point. Alright, well Hussain, any last words? Anything we missed? Anything you wanted to say before we jump off here?
Hussain Naqi:
No, just thank you. It’s been a blast. Look forward to it and safe travels to everybody heading out to Vegas and I look forward to seeing everybody out there.
Ryan Knuppel:
Amazing. Good luck in the future and look forward to having you on in a couple years when you’re have hundreds of games and things. If you’re
Hussain Naqi:
Still’s, ster
Ryan Knuppel:
Alive, if you’re still making
Hussain Naqi:
It. Yeah, exactly. Seriously, seriously.
Ryan Knuppel:
Alright my friend,
Hussain Naqi:
Thank you very
Ryan Knuppel:
Much. Yeah, thank you for everything. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Hussain Naqi:
Take care.
Ryan Knuppel:
Alright, that was Hussain Naqi of Inside the Pocket. Seems like a great guy. I have not got the pleasure of meeting him in person yet, but I’m excited to do so in Vegas. That will be amazing. I encourage you to head out to inside the pocket.io, check it out, see what they got going on, especially if you’re a business or a brand looking for ways to bring people in the door and get people engaged and really just help move the needle through free to play games. Reach out to Hussain, he’ll be a good one to at least talk to and see how they can help. Alright, that’s it for episode two 12. I’m Ryan Knuppel at K N U P out there. We’re on all the social channels. Please feel free to reach out to me anytime. I love talking sports, I love talking, betting, gambling, gaming, whatever you want to call it. Alright, that’s it for today. We’ll talk to you soon. Have a great day. Bye-bye.
Relevant Hussain Naqi Links
- Learn more about Inside the Pocket on their website.
- You can Hussain Naqi on LinkedIn.
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