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New startup College Emojis using emojis and AR filters to give fandom a personal face

To pay his tuition at Ohio University, RaShaun Brown used to throw parties. After one successful Halloween throwdown, Brown held $10,000 in his hands for the first time.

 

Brown carried that same hustle, networking and problem-solving ability to College Emojis, the company he founded with his close friends Chase Goodson and Kari Curry. In August 2019, the company launched an emoji keyboard loaded with college sports logos that users could download to their iPhones.  

Founder RaShaun Brown tries out College Emoji’s Ohio State AR filter.Courtesy of College Emojis

The fun lasted three weeks. Apple released the iOS 13 update for its iPhone operating system the next month, crippling the product.  

College Emojis was forced to diversify its offerings. Though the emoji keyboard no longer worked in iMessage, there was still the potential for licensing the product to individual colleges or bigger rights holders for use in their apps, and College Emojis also branched into creating augmented reality (AR) filters that can be monetized by the company and its clients through sponsorship. 

Brown said the company is earning low six figures in revenue, and the goal of becoming a million-dollar business in the coming years is a realistic one. The pivots that followed the Apple update are emblematic of the minority-owned company’s collective desire to sidestep any potential obstacles.

“That’s kind of been us right there,” Goodson said. “Whenever something goes bad, we look to see what’s next, what can we get ahead of?” 

Doesn’t hurt to ask 

Brown, Goodson and Curry’s entrepreneurial spirit began at Ohio U., where they created an emoji keyboard for Black fraternities and sororities. After graduating, Brown got a job at Texas A&M in ticket sales and development for the 12th Man Foundation, and the trio shifted their Greek life emoji keyboard idea to the college market.

GoodsonCourtesy of College Emojis
CurryCourtesy of College Emojis

Obtaining image rights was the main barrier complicating entry into the college sports emoji/sticker world. The market had been dominated by virtual stickers, image files that don’t seamlessly integrate into text messages like the more premium emojis do.

Brown sent social media messages to 2Thumbz Inc. and Sportsmanias, two of the leading companies in the space, which led to relationships, then strategic partnerships. 2Thumbz can access image rights for more than 300 colleges, licensed from rights holders such as Fermata and CLC. A revenue share deal with 2Thumbz saved College Emojis from the cost-prohibitive task of obtaining licenses itself.

Sportsmanias has six years of success with emojis and AR, though its work focuses mostly on professional sports. Its founder and CEO, Vicente Fernandez, said Brown was the primary reason he agreed to work with an unproven startup. 

“Within a few conversations and looking at what he’s been able to accomplish,” said Fernandez, “you know that he’s going to be innovative and hustle his way into making sure that they grow and become what they have the opportunity to become.” 

An update and a pivot 

Brown, Goodson and Curry kept their day jobs — Goodson works in sales and Curry is an athletic trainer at a high school — but they were on the phone for hours every night working on College Emojis.  

College Emojis

Started: 2019
Founders: RaShaun Brown, Chase Goodson, and Kari Curry
Based: College Station, Texas (Brown), Cleveland (Goodson) and Cincinnati (Curry)
Employees: 7, including a coder in Pakistan and an 18-year-old augmented reality (AR) designer in England
Primary offerings: Digital content for college athletics, including emojis, virtual stickers and AR filters

The original emoji keyboard, designed by a coder in Pakistan, was downloaded 10,000 times in the first three weeks following its official August 2019 debut, but the iOS 13 update left College Emojis scrambling. Emergency brainstorming sessions salvaged the keyboard by shifting its college logo emojis to stickers, and Brown and Goodson decided to pitch the original college emoji keyboard to companies involved in mobile messaging, like Facebook, to see if they would adopt the keyboard specifically for their platforms. 2Thumbz executive vice president Andrew Fox said the emoji keyboard needs “anything that drives ubiquity.”

They also decided to pursue AR. The technology brings virtual objects into the real world, usually through a mobile device. In the past few years, the pace of AR’s widespread adoption has increased to the point that investors are viewing its emergence as the next computing frontier. A MarketsandMarkets report estimates the AR market will grow from $10.7 billion in 2019 to $72.7 billion by 2024. AR investor Amy LaMeyer, who is managing partner of the Women in XR Fund, told an audience in 2019, “It’s like the dawn of the Internet, it’s like the switch to mobile.”

A huge opportunity

Beyond fan engagement, College Emojis’ AR filters — created by an 18-year-old in London — provide value through sponsor monetization and access to valuable consumer data. That concept interested Ohio State Sports Properties, which signed a deal with College Emojis in September following outreach by Brown. 

“Every major team, whether pro or college, should be thinking about this as a huge opportunity, the idea to be able to give fans cool tools to express themselves on game day, but on any day really,” said Fernandez. “Teams, leagues and partners should be thinking about it together.” 

Because of College Emojis’ low overhead — it has no office space and the co-founders still maintain their day jobs — and a few new unannounced deals with major players in the college space coming down the pipe, Brown said the company is cash-flow positive despite the emoji setback and no outside investment. The last year showed that College Emojis can navigate a business world wracked by a pandemic that is speeding up the already breakneck pace of digital development and burying inflexible companies.

“The way that the distribution happens is going to continue to change, so companies like College Emojis and Sportsmanias have to be flexible with the way that we get the content to fans,” said Fernandez. “In the meantime, [the Apple update] could be a blessing in disguise in that College Emojis will only get better at the content they’re creating and only find new avenues that will deliver the content in ways that will maximize their value in the long-term.”

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