Pikum: Betting Your Ppals

Sean Glass, one of the many success stories of college entrepreneurship, is getting ready to launch Pikum, his newest project, this spring. As students, Glass and his two partners started Higher One, a higher education-focused online financial services company, back in March 2000. In 2007, Higher One was ranked number 85 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing U.S. private companies. Following the success of that project, Glass moved to the UK to develop Pikum, initially known as Friendent, which describes itself as a social network where users are able to create their own games to play against friends or other people they meet online, either for money or for pure satisfaction. Essentially, it appears, Pikum will let users create online sports betting pools.

Pikum, whose management team also includes former Overture executive Johannes Larcher, closed a £2.6 million investment from Virgin USA in early March. The site is currently in stealth mode, so I can't tell you exactly how the betting will work on Pikum, or how the social aspect of the site will come into play. It also remains to be seen how Pikum will compare to likely competitors in the online betting space such as Betfair, Party Gaming, 888 and Tradesports. However, Glass did let me know that the site plans to launch towards the end of this month, so more details will be available then. We'll certainly be watching and keeping you updated, and we can't wait to see what this proven entrepreneur creates next!