Jack Puryear
Brandon Lloyd has been in the thick of the sports data craze as a point-of-sale technology vendor.
Lloyd, CEO of Bypass, has grown his company in seven years from a startup featuring mobile food ordering in minor league baseball to a leading supplier of POS software, compiling data that teams and food providers use to better know customers.
Over the past few years, Bypass found the right solution for its mobile products, developing a cloud-based POS system using tablets as the new cash register. The company has deals with most big league concessionaires spanning about 200 professional and college sports facilities.
Along the way, Bypass picked up high-profile investors such as Nolan Ryan, Casey Wasserman, Red McCombs, eBay and AEG.
Their investments have paid off. Last year, Bypass shipped more POS terminals than competitors Micros and NCR combined, according to Lloyd.
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“We think the data the point-of-sale system is collecting is going to be leveraged in amazing ways to make the business more efficient and profitable,” Lloyd said. One aspect is smarter inventory control, a “constant battle” for concessionaires, he said.
For Lloyd, it all started in college when he formed Off Campus Solutions during his senior year at the University of Virginia. OCS partnered with local merchants in Charlottesville to expand the use of stored-value cards students held to buy food, books and other things on campus.
“There’s about a billion dollars in stored value in student ID cards in any given year across the U.S.,” he said. “That project took me deep into the weeds in transaction processing and financial technology, which was the basis for how and why we got into Bypass.”
In 2006, Lloyd sold the company to Sodexo, a prominent concessionaire in the college space.
Lloyd had moved to Austin, Texas, to work for Sodexo, and he started Bypass in May 2010. His initial investors included Ryan, the Hall of Fame pitcher, and his two sons, baseball executives Reid and Reese Ryan. Bypass’ first client was the Dell Diamond, home of the Round Rock Express, a Class AAA team owned in part by Ryan-Sanders Baseball, which is co-owned by the Ryan family and local businessman Don Sanders.
— Don Muret
brandon lloyd
bypass | ceo
Age: 36
Where born: Sacramento
Education: University of Virginia
Family: Wife, Lily; children, Baur (9), Brynn (7), Walker (4), Miller (2)
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at age 20? Professional success is determined more by hiring great people and learning from them, than any contribution you will ever make on your own.
Profession other than your own you’d most like to attempt: Prior to founding my first company, I was on a track to become a lawyer.
Cause supported: Education (K-12).
Guilty pleasure: Weeks in Telluride, Colo.
Person in the industry you’d most like to meet: Dan Snyder. I’m a lifelong Redskins fan; would love to hear his vision for the franchise.
I am one of the best I know at … : Convincing people to join a team and work toward a vision.
The sports industry needs to do a better job of … : Building technology that is designed to collaborate.
Most thrilling/adventurous thing I’ve done: Start companies, which comes with a lot of uncertainty at the beginning.
