New technology from startup ventures is transforming the global sports industry. This Startup Series has introduced over 300 startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience by allowing Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story and pitch their idea. Feel free to submit your startup’s answers to the below questions or contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for inclusion in this series.
This series is supported by Stadia Ventures. If you are a sports technology startup looking for strategic investors, we recommend checking out their upcoming accelerator programs.
Company name: talk2Legends
Founder(s): Ryan Hermansky, Thoms Stitt, Mark McVey
Headquarters: Scottsdale, AZ
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Talk2Legends is a mobile platform that connects athletes, musicians and celebrities with their fans via video chat. This is the ultimate fan experience that allows both current and retired Legends to raise money for charity or themselves.
2. Problem & Solution
Fans are constantly seeking new experiences and often leave unfulfilled with the current fan experience of social media. Talk2Legends allows fans to directly contact Legends and ask them questions.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
Our target market is avid sports fans, which is defined as a sports fan that attends two or more sport related events per month. Currently there are 22.14M fans that attend a sport specific event per month. Of those 22.14M fans, 47.3% of them seek out additional fan experiences such as autograph shows, pep rallies etc., making them avid fans. That leaves a total population of avid fans of 10.46M which spend on average $725 annually, leading to a total spent of $7.54 Billion.
The goal for talk2Legends is to capture 20% of the avid sports spending, which leads to a $1.51 Billion market. Additional revenue is available by connecting fans with musicians and celebrities.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
Our main revenue model is charging fans for each fan experience. Fans choose which legend they want to video chat with and pay for the interaction. An average video chat call is $50 of which 50% gets paid to the Legend.
We are also exploring a "white label" model which would allow teams or organizations to license our technology for a monthly fee. In this model, a company could use our app and with the appearance that the app was designed specifically for them.
5. Management Team – with titles
Ryan Hermansky - Founder and CEO
Jeff Spaulding - Director of Talent Acquisition
Thomas Stitt - CFO
Gene Chung - Chief Technology Officer
6. Financial Needs: are you currently looking for investment? Have you raised investment already? If so, who are your investors?
We are currently in a seed round of funding seeking $2M of investment. We closed out a friends and family round of funding which raised $425,000.
