It’s time to meet the team again! And this time, we’ll be meeting Paul. For those of you who don’t know Paul, he’s the Founder and Chief Technical Officer of OddsMonkey! That’s right, he gave birth to this company And being a tech person himself, he developed the OddsMatcher. Clever or what?!
Meet the team: Paul
Hi Paul! So tell us about yourself! Whereabouts in the UK are you from?
Hi, I grew up in London but I now live just outside Cambridge.
How did you come up with the idea to launch OddsMonkey?
I initially learned how to matched bet using the Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert website. There were pages and pages of text guides. It took a good while for the penny to drop and for me fully grasp the concept.
Back then, the whole process was very manual and you needed to have quite a few webpages open. And then trawl through lots of events to try and find odds that worked and resulted in a profit. You could still make a good profit, but it just took lots and lots of time. I realised that, as a computer programmer, I could try and build some software to automate a lot of the searching and comparisons. So I set to work in my spare time and the concept for the very first OddsMatcher was born.
How did you come up with the name OddsMonkey?
When I first built the site, I had a group of keen matched bettors from various forums and they were testing the site for me before it was first launched. I came up with a list of possible names, ranging from funny and light-hearted to more serious names. I ran a poll with all the initial beta testers and, overwhelmingly, they voted for OddsMonkey as the favourite. So it was very democratic 🙂 I’m not 100% sure where the option for the OddsMonkey name actually came from, but I think I was just exploring all different words related to the product. “Odds” and “Monkey” just seemed to have a nice ring to them. And I also had 2 young kids, so it may well have been influenced by them too!
What was the biggest challenge you faced when building OddsMonkey?
My biggest challenge in the early days was probably time. I had a young family and a full time job that paid the bills. So for the first few years, I worked on OddsMonkey in my spare time and that included lots of very late nights and weekends and sacrificing a lot of time doing other things.
What was your biggest achievement?
I’d probably say that my biggest achievement was the OddsMatcher software. It has changed over the years but, essentially, it is very much the same concept that I developed over 10 years ago. It makes me extremely proud to know how many thousands of people it has helped to make some extra money and allow them to buy things or do things that they may not have been able to without Matched Betting.
Where do you see matched betting in the next 10 years?
That’s quite a difficult one to answer for certain but, essentially, I can’t see too much changing with the way that bookmakers try to attract customers. I’d guess that they will continue to use extra value, in the form of free bets or enhanced odds. With any of these promotions offered by bookmakers, OddsMonkey will continue to work hard to devise strategies and build software to help our members lock in a profit.
What would you say to someone who is yet to start matched betting?
I’d say that you are in for a treat as, at the time of writing, you’ve picked the best time to learn the ropes. We are just about to launch the new OddsMonkey website and one area where we’ve really focused is to make that initial learning process as simple and straightforward as possible. With an experience where we walk you through everything.
With the new website, it will be easier than ever to get to grips with Matched Betting really quickly and you’ll be on your way to earning some extra cash from home. And it’s something that you can do at any time that suits you.
What do you do in your spare time? Do you have any hobbies?
Since 2020 I really got into the sourdough bread craze in a big way. My wife has a yeast intolerance, so the only bread she can eat is sourdough, so when we couldn’t get out to a sourdough bakery during lockdown, I tasked myself to make my own Sourdough loaves. After a lot of YouTube research, I can now make a decent loaf and it’s actually turned out to be one of my favourite things to do as I find it a total break from working at a computer. I’m also really into making our own neapolitan pizzas at home. Pizzas that cook in 90 seconds, what’s not to love!?
Outside of that, I enjoy watching football, playing pool and socialising with friends.
And that’s it from Paul. If you have any questions, just post in the comments below! Stay tuned for our next meet the team interview…
Or if you’re ready to give OddsMonkey a go and see how you could make money from matched betting, start your Free Trial today!
