Throughout each year, tens of millions join their friends to partake in the fun and strategy of fantasy sports. When Cameron Joyner’s job offered him a stock purchasing program, he thought about how fun it would be if he and his friends could play fantasy stocks, but never pursued the idea.
Six years later, however, as meme stock investment fueled heightened media attention for the stock market and alternative trading options, Joyner founded Bearbull to blend the stock market with fantasy sports.
The central format of Bearbull’s fantasy stock games is that 6 or 12 people can join a group wherein each will select 12 stocks, two of which will be “benched” and 10 of which will be active. Users will then each have 100 shares to invest in their active stocks.
The game can be played either with the goal of investing in stocks that will grow the most or by shorting those stocks that a user believes are poised to decrease in value. Players can select whether they would like their competitions against others in their groups to be decided by daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly results.
Users can partake in either free or paid competition. In the free version, players set up the specific rules of the game; with paid options, Bearbull sets up the game (though the format is largely consistent across both free and paid games). Notably, while users may choose to pay to play in the Bearbull-organized games, no money is actually being spent on stocks within the startup’s platform.
Bearbull will also feature an “arena” option for gameplay—accessible via a subscription—whereby users can play multiple games within a longer season to climb the leaderboards and rankings of Bearbull.
An all-new approach to stocks
Bearbull is the first startup to take a fantasy approach to the stock market, Joyner said. While there are stock stimulators and apps that effectively position stocks as sports players, Bearbull is the first to truly present the stock market in a fantasy sports format.
“It differentiates itself from everything, because this doesn’t exist,” Joyner said. “It’s one of one. There is nothing else in the market that’s even remotely close to it.”
The similarities of Bearbull’s gameplay to traditional fantasy sports in all aspects make it unique and easy for new users to learn and play.
By adding competitive and social aspects to stocks, Joyner said he expects more people to want to begin engaging in the stock market as a whole—which will in turn expand the market for Bearbull.
Reaching the intersection of fantasy sports and stocks
There are 20 million people in the United States who both trade stocks and play fantasy sports every year. This is the market Bearbull is focusing on capturing, Joyner said.
However, with about 70 million people investing in the stock market and 60 million people playing fantasy sports, the intersection of the two also has significant potential to expand.
Bearbull will earn revenue through paid games, subscriptions from users who want to play in the arena mode and advertising spaces.
For each paid game, there will be sponsorship opportunities offering companies the chance to display their logos and say that they sponsored a specific game. Within the arena mode, Joyner is designing digital stadiums for gameplay, and companies can also purchase naming rights for these digital stadiums.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Bearbull
Founder: Cameron Joyner
Founded: 2024
Team size: 1
Location: Raleigh
Website: playbearbull.com
Funding: Bootstrapped
At the time of this writing, Joyner is wrapping up his time in CED‘s GRO Incubator. He said that participating in this program helped refine all aspects of Bearbull, from monetization and defining the market to gameplay.
A minimum viable product for Bearbull that includes the free games is expected to be released in April 2026, Joyner said. The arena game mode will follow in 2027.
“I look at it as a bridge between fantasy sports and Wall Street,” Joyner said. “I look at it as a new innovative way to look at the stock world, engage with the stock market. I look at it as its own new entity.”
