The 11th edition of the Post Game Newsletter features Jack Adler, Founder of Out2win, AI-powered athlete marketing intelligence platform helping brands, agencies, and universities optimize athlete partnerships.
Jack started the business while still a student at Syracuse University and has since raised $1.3m in an effort to change how brands approach athlete partnerships in the ever-changing era of NIL and influencer marketing.
Here are a few takeaways from the conversation:
The Side of Being a 24-Year-Old Entrepreneur You Don’t See
Jack talks about how he almost stopped building Out2win on several occasions but just kept going. He says social media platforms like LinkedIn are great for building relationships and sharing the highlights, but often times they don’t share the full story and “unglamorous” parts of being a solo founder.
He spent two years trying to build the business while not seeing traction, but was motivated not to quit and give up the dream of building the company. He broke through when he saw a gap in how brands could improve how they approached athlete partnerships.
“And that was the origin of this pivot into the athlete marketing intelligence platform where fast forward to that moment in time, by no means was it an AHA, like we got it. This is what it is.
It was like, alright, as a team of one, I’m now pivoting after having a team of up to 30 behind me at Syracuse to go and try, achieve what at the time felt really far-fetched. And it is cool, a year and a half, two years later, to look at myself in that mentality then to where we’ve come now. It’s definitely a long way, but still hopefully a long way to go.”
Raising $1.3M with $0 Revenue
Jack was able to raise $1.3M for Out2Win in his latest angel round thanks in part to going back to his network he built up at Syracuse. He says he was always hustling, spending two years networking his ass off, and maintained those relationships, never asking for things in return.
At the time he was going to raise the round, Out2Win had no revenue, but he did have the network and was able to show some past success generating revenue from his time as an NIL agency helping brands like Reebok and Oakley with NIL campaigns.
“That's what happened in our angel round. It was a group of people who just believed in me and the vision that not only put their own check in, but they vouched to a group of others that we're looking for cool opportunities to get involved in.”
The Most Marketable Teams in College Sports
Jack talks about the most marketable teams in college sports may not be who you might expect…
He says Nebraska Women’s Volleyball and UConn women’s basketball are at the top of that list, according to several metrics included in Jack’s Out2Win score.
Overall, Jack’s a super impressive dude growing a startup in the middle of the most interesting time in the history of college athletics.
Not to mention, we were able to get out from behind the screen and link up in person at The Philly Podcast Space.
Check Out the Full Episode:
Since I neglected to put out last week’s edition, also including the episode I did with Brandon Zachary, the host of The Athlete Resilience Center Podcast and a former college ball player at TCNJ.
The ARC Podcast is dedicated to normalizing the conversation around mental performance in sports, coaching, and the transitions athletes face after their careers.
Here are a few things we talked about:
The identity shift athletes face
We talked about how it can be easy to wrap your identity around some external factor like being an athlete, whatever your profession is, etc. The reality is, that’s just what you do, not who you actually are.
Embracing Failure and Staying Even Keeled
We discussed embracing failure. The more stories you come across from people who have “made it” the more you find that the success came after hundreds of failures, willing to look dumb and ask questions, make iterations, then just stay in the game long enough to figure it out.
Taking Advantage of Time As an Athlete
Something that’s come up a few times with pod guests who help athletes these days is how they should consider using their platform to explore interests, build connections, and discover potential career paths while they are playing, rather than wait until it’s about to come to an end, then scramble to figure it out.
Check out the Full episode with Brandon:
Tony V to the Giants
You’re never gonna be ready for the next job til you just do it.
Sports Biz News
I’ve been diving deeper down the sports business rabbit hole recently. Just had Vasu Kulkarni from Courtside Ventures on the pod recently (episode coming out soon). I’ve never heard of The 4th Quarter, but I feel like the current formula is a podcast, newsletter, events (this is me minus the events and raising $300M).
I wonder what will come next or if there’s anything else to add to the mix to differentiate??
Have some awesome episodes coming in the next few weeks.
Here are a few:
10/29 - Drew Shore - Former NHL Hockey player, Host of Betting The Limit, Founder of Amalfi, and NHL agent with Wasserman
11/5 - Lucas Espada - Former college soccer player at Northeastern. Founder of ShowNxt, transforming the soccer recruiting experience
11/12 - Dean Snell - One of the co-designer of the Titleist ProV1. Founder of Snell Golf outside of Boston, MA. Thanks for landing this one Sammy
11/19 - Kianna Smith - Former Louisville hoops star who played in the Final Four, former WNBA, currently working for Nike
11/26 - Bela Carrasco - Former soccer player at Marquette, Assistant VP at Origin Investments, and podcast host
Thanks for checking out the pod / newsletter. Keeping these things rolling. We’ve got 15 episodes recorded over the past few weeks that I’ll be putting out over the next couple months.
Feel free to share this with a friend or Goldman Sachs co-worker!
Til Next Week,
Joe