How do I actually get started

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Hey all i'm an experienced programmer and mathematician, but i'm at a loss about how one actually starts trading on betfair. I stupidly built some infra for betfair with the intention of collecting some l2 data for 6 months ish and then starting to trade in anger. This was clearly a mistake, as I was declined for the prod API key and directed to the historical data purchase to parameterise/research a model first.

This is understandable from their POV as I guess they have their own infra costs, but it seems like a bit of an unnecessary barrier to entry at £250/month of historical l2 data. I'd be interested to know what other people did before starting out, as I'm unsure what is the best approach. I could deploy some sort of low risk algo to generate some monthly volume very quickly, and then carry on with my plan, but this feels like the wrong way forward. Is there a minimum volume they expect you to generate before being granted a key - I assume so or I don't know why they would ask that question in their signup form. Did other people just buy historical data and then launch? From my perspective i'm just trying to derisk any up front costs if I don't even know I can find an edge.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!