Sameer Ahuja: Building the Future of Youth Sports (Full Transcript)
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Full Transcript:
Ronen Ainbinder
It is my honor and pleasure to introduce our following guest of the Halftime Snacks!
Our guest today has a super solid background. He holds a master's degree from Harvard Business School and a bachelor's from Columbia.
Additionally, he has over 20 years of experience as a C-suite executive of high-growth technology businesses from startup to growth stage.
He co-founded an interactive sports attraction, founded a hedge fund, built a fin-tech company, raised over $110M of investor capital, and achieved two successful exits!
Today, he's the COO of GameChanger, a company developing youth sports communities with the highest quality game coverage.
Our guest's area of expertise lies in the intersection between finance, data, and technology.
Ladies and gentleman, Sameer Ahuja!
Sameer Ahuja
Thank you for having me on. And I'm excited to be here. Looking forward to our discussion. No, man, thank
Ronen Ainbinder
you for accepting my invitation to the halftime snacks. It is an honor to host you here today. And I want to start by asking you about your story and your background. But I want to know specifically, what is something interesting about your story in your background that not so many people know?
Sameer Ahuja
Absolutely. as you said, I've been an entrepreneur for a long time. But there's a specific area that I've spent a lot of time studying and thinking about, and it's something a lot of people don't focus on, it's a little wonky, but it's this notion of complex systems. And what complex systems are is a field that trains you to think about very unexpected, what they call fat tail events. Nassim Taleb, who's quite famous as a writer, talks a lot about this; people never prepare for major things to happen. As we know, stock market crashes and pandemics are never prepared for sudden shifts in losing their customers or, or someone beating them to a new market, off a huge drop in employee morale. Last year, we saw politicians worldwide are unprepared for big changes and big shifts in sentiment. Things happen slowly. Then they happen all of a sudden, and people are usually caught off guard. So this is something I've not a lot of people know, but I've spent a lot of time trying to train myself and learn about these topics. And I think they're applicable in everything and in building companies, being a good member of your community, and a good leader. And so I see examples of this kind of thinking everywhere. I write a personal blog called complexity everywhere. And I A lot of my writing focuses on this topic. But I use it every day even if it's something as simple as a team of a team on in your company is underperforming, you want to make sure you avoid some sudden shift in that team to the other side. You don't want to wake up one day and have all of your customers left due for another product. It's something I think more people should train their minds to think about.
Ronen Ainbinder
Yeah, there's this online writer and investor called Morgan Housel. Maybe you have heard about him? But he says, Yes, he wrote this, this piece about the risk, and how the most dangerous risk is the one that no one saw coming. So the biggest impact of 2020 he gave us an example that it wasn't the trade war, or it wasn't Trump's political position or all the things that they wanted to do. No, the biggest and most dangerous risk of all was COVID. No one saw it coming. So I guess that it goes along the lines of what you say and what you write about. I know your blog is super interesting to go over it and dig into the rabbit hole of all the things you write. So I'm sure we're going to talk a little bit about that later. But I want to ask you now about Harvard because it's interesting to see how education is shifting a lot, and I want to know your take on that. And if you think it's still as valuable as it was before, go to Harvard, for example. I also want to know if there's any common trait between students in Harvard that you noticed that you think it's very important, either for business or for life, or why most US companies' leaders come out of there? Can you share with us your thoughts about all of that?
Sameer Ahuja
Absolutely. First, on the value of education, I'm a huge proponent of value. I've been fortunate enough to attend some wonderful schools. My wife works in higher education. As someone who works in technology, I think it's important to realize that there's a dramatic shift in the value proposition. And I think most colleges and universities need to move faster to address that. And it's not just the pandemic. Even once that subsides, information and knowledge are ubiquitous on the internet. And universities have made huge investments in building infrastructure and staff and buildings and huge campuses; they need to justify their value. And, and so I think there's going to be a lot of innovation there. And I'm hoping that both new entrants and the existing universities and colleges can take education forward and make it even more ubiquitous for everyone. In terms of Harvard, I went to Harvard Business School. It's an amazing place. And the obvious answer to your question, and what a lot of people say, is leadership; the mission of Harvard Business School is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. But I think there's something else that I would argue might be a little even more powerful, right.
I know many of the people I went to school with, and since others I've met, they're passionate about serving the common good. I think this was missing last year, at least in the United States, right? With the pandemic, with racial inequality. With all the political turmoil, you saw many people putting themselves ahead of the well being of others. And that has to change right now; the typical Harvard Business School student pursues business like I have, maybe later in life, they pursue public service. But you do see many of them helping the common good through their businesses. You don't have to wait to be later in life to do that. I know. We'll talk about it more later. That's one of the reasons I love working at GameChanger because we're serving communities everywhere. But that's an important trait, serving the common good. I've seen so many Harvard graduates have an impact, and I hope it continues.
Ronen Ainbinder
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with what you say, Sameer, first of all, for the value proposition of education. It's crazy how we live in an age where all the information and everything is online. You can learn any skill online. And these crazy, super inflated tuition costs are kind of opposing the whole idea of how the value of the university is, is shown, I guess that that's something that will change. I don't know if it's changing right now. But I'm sure that will change in the future. And I also think that what you said is also very key because I thought about, I thought about this question when I was writing it. I thought, wow, this is a super basic question because he's just going to answer me that Harvard educates leaders, and that's obvious! There are millions of articles about it, but I guess that charisma and precedence and character and composure, and the need to serve the community. I feel like it's more oriented towards having a purpose and knowing your life's why, and knowing where you're going. So what's your why would you share with us what's your life purpose? What do you want to achieve? You said a little bit to serve the community with GameChanger. So can you just throw us your 'why'?
Sameer Ahuja
Yeah, absolutely. I. And it's, by the way, it's taken me a long time to get to this point, but I genuinely think it's important for people to be rooted in finding happiness. And I've been inspired by the writings of this individual called Anthony de Mello. He was, he's passed away, he was an Indian priest and writer and a spiritual figure. And he wrote several books, and his writings were published. And he has this sort of quote that, if you don't mind, it'd be nice to share; he says there's not a single moment in your life when you do not have everything you need to be happy. Think of that for a moment. You're unhappy because you're focusing on what you don't have rather than what you have right now. I believe in being in the moment and kind of finding happiness and what you have. For me, I've found that helping others, whether it's through work, or my activities, or community service, I find a lot more inspiring than doing something just for myself. So my purpose is to do whatever work I do, or whatever stuff I do outside of work to kind of put the overall common good ahead of people. And again, I feel fortunate that I've been able to find that in my business work. And I've certainly done things where that isn't the case. But I am currently, and I hope for the rest of my life and career, focused on that,
Ronen Ainbinder
You've been well from my research that I read about you. You've been almost everywhere. Of course, your education was a very solid one, and then you worked for AT Kearney and then JP Morgan. So you've been at the forefront of many financial numbers, many financial deals, funding. So I wonder how if you could just give us an overview or, in a nutshell, an explanation of how VC funding works differently from Angel funding, and how their respective challenges the fair, How are you different?
Sameer Ahuja
Yeah, absolutely. So in my background, I've had a lot of success working with angels. And because I've been able to build personal relationships with those individuals. With the dramatic rise in tech and valuations and all of that, the lines have been blurred. So you have individuals, many famous people who have accumulated so much capital and have become angels, that they're rivaling large venture capital firms, right in terms of their cloud. And you may find that aligning with a very notable angel is even better than going to a firm as an entrepreneur.
But interestingly enough, a lot of VC firms are moving now at the speed that an angel might move with decision making. And also with transparency on how they work, what kind of terms they offer. There's this new concept. And there are so many of them, and I'm not an expert on all of them. But there's this new concept of a rolling fund that I've been reading about. I believe it was pioneered or popularized by Angel list. Fund managers can now accept capital quarterly in auto-renewing commitments, and you can raise a fraction of a normal fun to start investing immediately in startups. And there's so much great innovation. The bias is for speed and transparency, driven by the angel community. My main view and my main advice to folks would be, I think there's a huge gap between someone who believes in you 99% and someone who believes in you and your business 100%. And so I would, I would always opt for the person or the firm, the angel investor, or the partner at the VC firm, who's as convinced as you are that you're crazy idea that no one believes in is going to work, right. And you want them waking up every day, thinking about your business, which they can introduce you to what idea they can give you what advice they can give you. I've seen situations where you have an investor who doesn't care much as you do. There are enough intelligent investors, enough capital out there that you should be choosing and find the one in the trenches with you the whole way.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's interesting. It sounds like it's all about finding someone aligned with your purpose or your life's why we talked about it. So it's very interesting. Is there any specific amount of money that every startup founder should know when to go for an angel and go for VC? Or is there no limit? Or if you could explain it very simply to someone that wants to learn? How would you explain that? Yeah, again,
Sameer Ahuja
in the more typical world, I would say before, you went before you have a working product, you should go to an angel, and when you have a working product, or when you have one or two customers, you should go to a VC that's sort of a very high-level split. But again, I think all of this is being jumbled now. Because angels are doing bigger things, and VCs are doing smaller things. It's typically someone who comes to me and says, I have a great idea, I would say, and if they need money, I would say go to some angel investors. Interesting things are happening, unlike ten, 15, 20 years ago, I think it's harder for non-technical founders to raise money with an idea. By the way, I dipped into data science pretty significantly, but I'm not an engineer. And so I have lots of friends who are business people, and they start companies, and unless you have a track record, I think it's gotten a little harder to raise money on an idea. Unless you can show a prototype. It is doable but harder. And so, I would encourage a non-technical founder to partner up with someone technical to build a prototype. It doesn't have to be pre customer and all that. But you that seems like it's a little bit of a higher bar, right.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's interesting, Sameer; thank you for sharing that. And now I want to switch over to GameChanger, the company that you live in you run currently? And I want to know, specifically, what type of pain points you solve through GameChanger? Why are they relevant? I also want to dig deeper into the question and ask you what are the "jobs to be done." And the job to be done is the definition of what pain entails. For example, if, let's say, the pain is that I cannot cook myself a better meal, the job to be done is to have more time to cook better meals to improve my diet. So how would you explain the pain points and the jobs to be done being addressed by GameChanger to improve youth sports all around the US?
Sameer Ahuja
I like to start by saying, and many people on our team like to say the most important sports game of the week is not the one that LeBron James is playing in. It's the one that your child or your grandchild is playing. That's what game changers about. What we do is solve the problem solve a couple of problems. First of all, coaches are at these games are volunteers, teachers, members of the community. And we have given them an app that allows them to be better coaches. They want to help the kids that they coach learn more, more skills around how to play the sport, learn better. Sort of psychological and developmental skills be better teammates. What we allow them to do is keep track of the game. Using an easy-to-use and functional app gives them all of the statistics they would collect from that game to share with their kids and make them better coaches at the same time. If you're a fan of the team, you're a parent of a child, your grandparent, your uncle, your aunt, and how will you watch that game? Right, if you want to watch a professional football match or a professional baseball game, you know how to do that. You can do it on a TV network or online. We've solved that problem for what we call fans, right? You don't need any fancy equipment to do it, just your phone. We stream the activity of the game that the coach is recording to your phone. You can watch a visualization of the game. You can listen to the game in your car. If you're driving from work to a meeting, you can read an AI-generated recap of the game with your kid's name in the headline My son john hit two home runs to win the game today. And there's nothing more exciting than that emotional connection. And in the world we live in, people are busier and busier every day. They can't get to every game, you may have multiple children, and one parent needs to go to one game, the other needs to go the other in the US families are spread out. And so your grandparents might be in another place. And they want to feel a connection to their grandkids. We get so many customer reviews coming in saying you've allowed me to have something to talk to my grandson about my granddaughter about that we're solving this problem of connecting people who aren't always connected. And youth sports are such a powerful way to do that. Because it's played in every community, in the country, and around the world, it's played in rural communities, urban communities, suburban communities everywhere. The cool thing also is we've done this on a massive scale. So every year, we broadcast 4 million youth sports games. We broadcast more games in one month in the spring than in the entire history of Major League Baseball. And by the way, we're just getting started right, so this year, you're going to automatically be able to create a highlight clip of your kids' best plays so the superstar in a video you can share that video on social media with your family. Soon you'll be able to do advanced assessments of things like pitch arc and velocity and other sorts of more advanced data that you can collect from video and other things like hardware sensors and all that. It's an exciting space. And I believe our work is important because youth sports is, as I said, so it's such an important part of communities' fabric. So the coaches I've spoken to them are motivated to help their kids develop. Families are so passionate about their kids developing social skills, working better with other kids, and working on teams. And the athletes, whether they're a kindergartener or an elite High School player, are so passionate about what they do, and the right sports can teach o many amazing lessons. And, and like I said earlier, I think it's a great way to learn about the common good, right. And this is, by the way, been very important during the pandemic. Due to social distancing guidelines, many played games without spectators, maybe one coach is allowed, and the kids have to be separated. So our products allow families to stay connected to those games without having to be there.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's awesome, Sameer, it's fascinating to see that, and I feel, and this is just my prediction. Still, I feel like the power of youth sports, which I believe I wouldn't be so sure, but I believe it's a bigger market than professional sports due to the number of involved participants. But I would say that you're indirectly solving a different pain and letting them see what you think about it. But you're improving the system of scouting for professional teams, through the videos, statistics, and data that you can collect out of this, the youth, individual players playing all over the US? So what I mean is that maybe there's this coach in this college team that is looking for a great soccer player, and he can come to you guys and be like, Listen, I need someone that can play at the speed that with this ability and knows how to do these four things. And you'll be like, oh, our AI technology can find you, someone, in 10 seconds, instead of you having to go all over the country, like looking for people. So I'm not sure if that's a pain point you're addressing? I'm not sure as well if it's something you would address later or you're indirectly preparing to address. But I think that it could solve a lot of problems there as well. What do you think about it,
Sameer Ahuja
I think you've hit on something important we have gone from indirectly addressing that, subconsciously addressing it to this year, working to address it directly. We are now directly addressing it because we feel like video highlights are the missing piece there. So we have at least in youth baseball and softball, the largest statistics database in the world. And it's quite reasonable with the way technology is now to apply AI to understand trends and identify unique athletes and their performance. When you combine that with the actual video and highlights of a player, you have a good picture of high-quality potential players who might want to get recruited by colleges or even professionals. And what we're excited about in the future is collecting all forms of data, the sort of growth of hardware sensors, on bats on other for other equipment on balls on gloves, sensors to detect biological data, you have these smartwatches and things like that. We'd like to be able to aggregate all that to form a comprehensive profile of our athletes, particularly the more elite older ones who are thinking about, like you said, getting recruited. It's a huge opportunity. It's a small number of the total athletes we serve. But a significant pain point. And our team's gotten excited to hear about, as I said, overtly solving this problem. And we certainly feel like we're one of the products and companies that can be of a lot of value to athletes like that.
Ronen Ainbinder
I'm looking forward to learning about the next LeBron James, and GameChanger found that through the app. I think that's going to be a game-changer for professional sports. Right?
Sameer Ahuja
That's right. I'll let you know before anyone else!
Ronen Ainbinder
Let me know so I can bet on this guy before! But I think that it's super exciting what you guys are working on. I think that technology is also very exciting. And the things that you're able to combine between video and technology and AI and data are super, super promising for the future. And I'm looking forward to all the things that you guys are going to put out. And I know you mentioned a little bit about how the COVID pandemic shifted what you guys do or probably opened the opportunity for you. One of the great things is that, for example, older people who have are more at risk of in case they get the COVID. They can watch games and be present at their young kids' events without being there. So would you share with us a little bit more about how you've seen the customer react to these benefits from the pandemic provided by your company, your company Game Changer?
Sameer Ahuja
Absolutely. And just before I specifically talk about that, I want to touch on those communities and customers because we'd be nothing without them. Right? Many of them were deeply affected, right families lost loved ones, people lost jobs, kids, for the most part, many of them couldn't go to school or get a sort of normal education. I'm proud that GameChanger is part of Dick's Sporting Goods, the largest sports retailer in the United States at Dick's has made a major commitment to these communities through their sports matter Foundation, and it has been instrumental in supporting these communities. And I'm proud that we're part of that broader organization. As it relates to the GameChanger business, we saw a dramatic rise 20 to 25% increase in the number of active users on a given team. So a team that might have had 12 kids playing, maybe 20, parents were following along. And that number jumped up to 25. Frankly, we also saw a significant rise in end users who paid for our premium versions of our product because they wanted, the only way to get a full game experience in this COVID world was through our app. And, and again, so it happened for reasons that were were were not great. But we were glad to be there and connect a lot more people to our to those games, and we're seeing it now as well, in the new year that that trend is continuing and, and with video streaming, it's a complete game experience. So you can now watch your child like you would watch professional sports on television or the internet. And, and some of these restrictions, unfortunately, we're going to continue for a while, maybe a long while. And we're going to continue to create this connection and make people feel as normal as they can during this time.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's wonderful, Samir. When is it going to Mexico? I can't wait to have it here.
Sameer Ahuja
Yeah, I'll tell you, I had a regular weekly meeting with our VP head of product this morning. And he suggested that we should put internationalizing GameChanger on the roadmap going into the end of the year and next year. So we'll be there soon.
Ronen Ainbinder
I am looking forward to it, Sameer. I want to know. Also, I've seen on your blog that you write a lot about Bitcoin in that you're interested in the decentralized, five finance and sort of like the thing that you're very, very strong and solid, and on. So I want to know, what are your thoughts on Bitcoin? And if you think there's any way where Bitcoin could fit in the sports industry? If so, where and how?
Sameer Ahuja
It's something I've spent a lot of time learning about. No question for me, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are now in the mainstream. So I view Bitcoin, specifically as a safe harbor asset. And there's been a lot of talk about this. It appears to be like digital gold. I continue to expect a lot of adoption there. Cryptocurrencies, and that whole world in general, to me is about creating a new version of the internet, right? As you said, as you're right. Decentralization is a word that gets used a lot. So to me, it isn't like some anti-government thing of We don't want any control. It's about creating new platforms that are much more in alignment with their customers, with third parties, like developers that might build on top of them. As much as the dominant tech platforms have today are incredible. They all started that way. But now, many of them conflict with their users and there in their whole ecosystem. They have too much power over their users over developers who might build on their platform. So I think crypto can create new platforms and have more democracy on those platforms. It's still a long way to go with, and absolutely in sports, I think there are massive implications. There's one area, and there's many, but one area that I'm interested in. And there's been some good development there is like around virtual collectibles. So sports generate many events, a lot of data, and a lot of passionate fans, as we know, and they want to memorialize these events. So there was a lot of excitement about this crypto kitties thing a couple of years ago, and sort of building on that, I would expect to see an explosion of sort of crypto-based virtual collectibles around sports. And by the way, I think that'll start in professional. Still, I think it'll come all the way down to you as well, which we're thinking about, there's going to be other things is going to be sort of tokenization of players, profiles and all of that, because it's there's this sort of fundamental like payment layer here.
All transactions, I think, will shift in that direction. It's hard for people to envision, but I am in the camp that the internet will get rewritten and redone with this sort of underlying kind of crypto mentality. Is that going to take a long time? Sure. Does it seem hard? Is it hard to visualize it right now? But, but I've come to learn that that's how it was 20 years ago, 40 years ago, it just, it's hard to visualize, like we said what, what's going to happen around the corner, but this feels like a big wave to me. And certainly, in our work and my life, I'd like to make sure that we're understanding this and staying at the forefront of it.
Ronen Ainbinder
Awesome, man, thank you so much for sharing. And since we're running out of time, I'd like to ask you a more personal question. And that is what has been the greatest day in your life? And why do you remember that day specifically? Yeah.
Sameer Ahuja
So I'm going to have an unorthodox answer to this question. It gets a little bit of what I said earlier about Anthony de Mello and other people like that. I've come to believe in the importance of being in the here and now. So today is the greatest day of my life, and also tomorrow. I so appreciate what's right here and right in front of me. And I'm just thankful for everything I have. And I mean, it not to be so too philosophical. But every day, you move closer to not having any time left. And you need to enjoy and appreciate that moment, whatever it is work, you're doing interactions with friends, or families, kids who whatever it is, find, find that there's, there's your happiness comes from within again, it'd be very philosophical. Still, I truly believe that I'm just I'm, I'm, I'm thrilled to be here, and thrilled to all the opportunities that I have. And, and by the way, I would be remiss if I didn't say, I think that you're at work and halftime snack is just, and the community you're not just the interviews, the podcast, but the community that you're building is, it is amazing. I think you're putting a lot of amazing effort into it. I'm a; I'm a fan and very passionate about the subject matter. But even if you are doing some other subject, I think it's incredible to watch, and I look forward to being a big supporter of your work in the community for a long time.
Ronen Ainbinder
Well, thank you so much. I'm very happy to be part of the greatest day of your life up until tomorrow because tomorrow is going to be greater. So then I'm not going to be part but one, at least I was in one of the greatest days of your life to me. And that's an honor. And I want to thank you so much for taking the time to come to the halftime snacks and snacking with me talking about all these interesting things surrounding finance technology, Game Changer Bitcoin, what you guys have been doing throughout COVID it's inspiring. It's a great story. And I think that it will inspire so many of the listeners and all the people out there. So thank you so much. Once again, I appreciate your time and, of course, your insights. I can't wait to see what GameChanger will look like at the end of the year, of course, in Mexico. So thank you so much.