Betable Launches, and the game is on

True portfolio company Betable launched last week as the first and only platform that gives developers a simple, hosted API for legally integrating real-money gambling into mobile and web-based social games. The $450 billion gambling market is highly regulated, and the barriers to entry are enormous. Betable is removing most, if not all, of these barriers by handling the infrastructure, payment system and licensing processes of online gambling, as well as ensuring that people who are betting real money are in a physical location where it’s legal—like China, whose online gaming market is on track to surpass RMB 55.7 billion (US $8.84 billion) in 2012.

We invested in Betable as part of an impressive syndicate including Greylock Discovery Fund, Founders Fund, CrunchFund, Dave Morin (founder of Path), Yuri Milner, Scott Belsky (founder of Behance), Howard Lindzon (founder of Stocktwits), Joshua Schacter (founder of d.elicio.us) and Arjun Sethi (Lolapps). Betable has huge potential to revolutionize both the social gaming and gambling spaces. CEO Chris Griffin has impressive experience in both industries, and the rest of the Betable team is equally formidable, hailing from the likes of Threadless.com, SimpleGeo (acquired by True Company Urban Airship) and Zynga.

For a terrific portrait of all Betable does and means, check out VentureBeat’s awesome story on the company. Chris and the Betable team, congratulations on your launch!