He wanted to bet on the Cinderella story, not the spreadsheet. So he built the place to do it.
Most people in sports gaming start with a model. Torey Korsunsky started with a feeling - the one that hits during March Madness when a team nobody picked refuses to lose.
Today he is the Chief Business Officer of Novig, the commission-free sports prediction exchange where fans trade against each other instead of the house. He runs business strategy, growth, partnerships and the unglamorous machinery of an expanding company. He got the title in 2026, roughly a year after walking in the door as Chief of Staff. Inside a startup, that is not a promotion so much as a verdict.
Novig's pitch is heresy to the sportsbook industry: no house edge, no betting limits, no operator quietly shading the odds in its own favor. Users set prices and trade against one another, the way you would buy and sell a stock. The company put a $75M Series B behind that idea in February 2026. Korsunsky's job is to turn the heresy into a business.
He arrived with scar tissue, which is the useful kind of experience. Before Novig he was a founder.
I sought a platform that pointed me to the best stories about incredible athletes and allowed me to put my money on them, all in one place.- Torey Korsunsky, on why he built Units
The platform was Units, founded in early 2023. The premise was almost suspiciously simple. Daily fantasy sports had become a numbers arms race - optimizers, projections, a wall of green and red that scared off the casual fan. Korsunsky's read was that the people who fueled fantasy's explosion were not the spreadsheet crowd. They were the ones who watched for the drama. So Units served stories: eight to ten daily contests built around the headlines fans were already arguing about, and a way to put real money behind the narrative.
It launched in September 2023 across 19 states and Washington, D.C. - an iOS app shipped fast, in keeping with a founder who is allergic to waiting for perfect.
We bring a level of experience that really emphasized speed to market with a polished and quality app - but not necessarily a perfect app.- Torey Korsunsky, on shipping Units
Units reached a $6M GMV run rate. Then, in 2024, Korsunsky wound it down. Founders rarely talk about the closing chapter, but it is the chapter that teaches the most: how to read a market that will not bend, how to stop, how to carry the lesson forward without carrying the grudge. The thesis behind Units - that the casual majority is underserved and a little intimidated - did not die. It just needed a different vehicle.
That vehicle turned out to be Novig, where the same instinct lives at the level of market structure rather than content. Make it fair. Make it transparent. Make it feel like something a normal fan can join without a degree in probability. The Units founder and the Novig executive are chasing the same fan from two different directions.
Before The BetKorsunsky studied Science, Technology and Society at the University of Pennsylvania - a degree about exactly the collision he would spend his career inside, where technology, people and incentives meet and occasionally combust. From there the path is a connoisseur's tour of consumer and sports: a business analyst seat at Monitor Deloitte, time around brands like Harry's and Venmo, a senior associate role at Creative Artists Agency through its Evolution Media Capital arm, an operations and chief-of-staff stint at Highfive Brands.
The chapter that most directly set up the rest was WSC Sports, the AI company that automatically generates sports highlights for leagues and broadcasters worldwide. As U.S. Growth Lead and head of business development, Korsunsky sat at the seam where sports, technology and audience meet - the same seam Units and Novig are built on. By the time he founded his own company, he had already spent years learning how fans actually behave when a great moment crosses their screen.
It is a wide path, not a straight one. Strategy consulting, talent and media, consumer brands, sports tech, a founder's chair, now a C-suite seat at a venture-backed exchange. The throughline is not an industry. It is a question: how do you get ordinary people to take part in something that usually keeps them out?
Korsunsky keeps returning to one number, because it is the whole argument. Most sports fans never become hardcore players. They are not intimidated by sports - they are intimidated by the products built around sports. Every venture on his resume since WSC is, in one way or another, an attempt to lower that barrier: highlights that find the casual viewer, stories that invite the casual bettor, a fair exchange that does not punish the newcomer for not knowing the angles.
It is an unfashionable bet in an industry that loves its sharps. The big money has always chased the heavy users. Korsunsky keeps building for the other eighty percent - the ones who show up for the story and stay if you let them in.
Illustrative emphasis based on public roles, not a precise metric.
Eighty percent of sports fans are not hardcore players in the sports gaming space, and many are too intimidated to get involved.ON THE MARKET HE BUILDS FOR
Units appeals to the wide audience that fueled fantasy sports' explosion and ties directly to the headlines and stories they're already engaging with.ON THE PRODUCT
I sought a platform that pointed me to the best stories about incredible athletes and allowed me to put my money on them, all in one place.ON THE ORIGIN
Speed to market with a polished and quality app - but not necessarily a perfect app.ON SHIPPING
The idea for Units arrived during March Madness. He was not even a college hoops obsessive - he just could not find a place to back the underdog with real money.
His degree, Science, Technology and Society, is essentially the study of his own career: how tech and people collide and what falls out.
Harry's, Venmo, CAA, Deloitte, WSC Sports - an unusually wide tour of consumer and sports before he ever sat in a founder's chair.
He believes a polished app shipped fast beats a perfect app shipped late. Units went live in months, not years.
From Chief of Staff to Chief Business Officer in about a year. Startups hand out that title as a verdict, not a courtesy.
The through-line of every job: get the casual fan into a game that usually keeps them out.