As CEO of SmartSports, Corrine Vitolo is taking her swing at bringing measurement technology to athletes. The company features a product called SmartKage that measures baseball players’ skills through a series of performance tests. A deal with Sportvision in 2010 added to SmartSports’ capabilities. Vitolo, who founded the company with former minor leaguer Larry Scannell, talks here about the company’s pursuits.
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The thing that motivates everybody and engages everybody is the innovation. When you’re doing something that has never been done, the excitement of it motivates everybody. The innovation, the wonder, the discovery — all of it when you have a specific audience. This is not for everybody, but for the right people, those are the things that keep you going.”
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Photo: JONATHAN VITOLO
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On the company’s challenges: Without a doubt, the biggest barrier has been funding, particularly when you are very early to market. Companies like ours are usually funded through venture capital or private equity, so when you’re very early on, those funders want to see market validation. … Our capital costs are extraordinary. As we scale out and grow, the costs come down, but our initial technology [cost] is very high — which is why we’ve met our partners so carefully. Each installation is well over $100,000 worth of technology.
On the target market: The midpoint of the amateur market is our sweet spot for growth, and that would be inclusive of high school athletes. At the collegiate level, they are more developed, and the frequency of play is different — but by that point, by the time they’ve been recruited or enrolled in college, those numbers [of players] are more finite.
On market approach: Sports data and performance data: Everyone has a fitness band. That’s been the explosion of late, but we have always looked at the market very differently. We have approached it in a deliberate manner and we have focused on the immense void of having any standardization in data. Everybody can wear a band, but we focused on [standardizing] environments rather than athletes.
On how the business model has evolved: I didn’t think we would go into health and wellness applications so quickly. I thought it was going to be much more restrictive to sports verticals. … The way we structured this has been about addressing certain verticals very specifically, so the first version of our product was geared toward baseball and softball. Ten years ago, [we thought] the next version would have been football, but what we’re seeing now is that the general athleticism component and health and wellness is weighted so much more.
