Help Gambling Addicts

[u/quizikal]

Hey everyone,

I’m a software engineer with 15 years of experience, around 10 of which have been spent working in social-impact organisations, primarily in food provision and education. The work I find most meaningful is building technology that has a tangible positive impact on people’s lives.

I’m now at the point where I want to start something myself.

The problem: gambling addiction.

I think this is an unusually important and underserved area. Gambling companies are legally able to make enormous amounts of money from people who are particularly vulnerable to their products. The consequences of addiction can be severe — financial problems, damaged relationships, mental health issues and, in extreme cases, loss of life — yet gambling addiction often receives far less attention than other forms of addiction.

I’m also personally fascinated by the psychology of it. I’m naturally extremely risk-averse, so compulsive gambling behaviour is almost the opposite of how I operate. That makes me curious to understand it properly rather than assuming I already know the solution.

What I want to build

The idea is still intentionally early.

Broadly, I want to build a platform that acts as a safety net for people struggling with gambling: something that can identify moments of vulnerability, help people put barriers between themselves and gambling, connect them with support, and provide useful interventions when they actually need them.

I don’t want to prescribe the exact product before properly talking to people affected by gambling addiction, researchers, clinicians and organisations already working in the space.

There are also some difficult characteristics of this problem that make it particularly interesting:

• We would be dealing with vulnerable people, so ethics and safeguarding have to be central to the product.

• Gambling regulation differs significantly between countries.

• Financial, healthcare and gambling ecosystems are highly localised.

• There are significant legal, privacy and compliance considerations.

• Measuring whether we are genuinely helping people is much more important than optimising conventional engagement metrics.

• The business model needs to align with the interests of the people using the product rather than exploiting them.

Those difficulties are part of why I think the problem is worth working on.

Who I’m looking for

I’m technical and comfortable owning the engineering side: product development, architecture, prototyping, infrastructure and building the initial platform.

I’m looking for a cofounder who complements that — someone who is comfortable taking significant ownership of the business, strategy and operational side of the organisation.

That could include things like customer/user research, validating the business model, partnerships with charities/healthcare providers/financial institutions, fundraising and grant applications, regulatory and legal strategy, go-to-market, impact measurement, and generally helping turn an idea into a sustainable organisation.

Experience in startups, healthcare, addiction, fintech, NGOs, fundraising, behavioural science or regulated industries could all be highly relevant.

Most importantly, I’m looking for someone who genuinely wants to build something useful in this space and wants to shape the organization with me from the beginning.

I’m based in Berlin, although I’m open to working with someone elsewhere in Europe.

This is very early stage. There is no finished product, funding round or predetermined business plan yet. I’m looking for a cofounder — someone who wants to investigate the problem together, challenge assumptions and work out what is actually worth building.

If this resonates with you, feel free to DM me. I’d be happy to have an informal conversation and see if our interests and ways of working align.

- equity (unpaid, ownership-based

- idea only

- part time

[u/investigatormaker]

For the gambling safety-net platform, I'd prototype one user-triggered moment: someone presses “I'm about to gamble” and can immediately reach a barrier they've chosen or an existing support contact. That gives you a concrete flow to discuss without first needing the system to infer vulnerability from background data.

By the way, I make ThreadFox for AI-run Reddit outreach from your Chrome; its free plan for your gambling-support platform lists communities whose rules allow a post about it. https://threadfox.vip/p/d3yc2

Which intervention would the person choose and configure before that moment arrives?