All right, Reed, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Kyle. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah. Appreciate you joining. I know you guys have some news to share today, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to read the top of the TeamSnap One release, and then I'll have you sort of play it back and describe more in depth, just real quick. So TeamSnap One unveils. TeamSnap unveils. TeamSnap One, a next generation platform poised to redefine the future of youth sports technology from registration and communication to expert training and live streaming in one connected experience. So why don't you give me, in your words, what that means?

Yeah, I think it's an exciting time for us. We've spent the last nearly two years really spending thousands of hours with our customers trying to get to what is the ideal product they need across the suite of customers that we serve. Right. And that includes sports organizations all the way through the family who's out there on the field every weekend and every weekday. And it means that we've completely reimagined our products for organizations. So how they register players, how they collect money from them, how they schedule games, really importantly to us how they communicate with those families. Right. One of the things we think about is if registration works, right, you spend like a minute there, but you spend weeks, months with these organizations, and the way that they're able to talk to their families is incredibly important. And I think teamsnap got its start as a consumer application and had the foresight almost 20 years ago. Right. To build the first team communication app. And I think we've invested a lot to make that even better. But we're going beyond the team communication and utility with TeamSnap One and Two. How do we help coaches ensure that kids realize their full potential? And how do we help parents better memorialize each season? Right. Like, we're excited to build software now that does more than just tell you what time practice is at or where the game is. That's critical, but we're building features to help make sure that you capture every moment along the journey in your kid's sporting life.

Awesome. Well, we'll get into the individual parts. Maybe it's good for you to give your background. You co founded Mojo, which was acquired by TeamSnap almost two years ago now, and you co founded that with former Disney exec Ben Sherwood. So maybe talk about your background briefly. And now your role as CTO@TeamSnap.

Yeah. Spent the last 20 years, all of it working in technology at Microsoft and a number of gaming companies actually, and then started a company, I'm a two time entrepreneur, started one in the HR tech space that helped hourly workers get jobs. We also sold that company and then Ben and I started Mojo in really in early 2020. In fact, we actually raised our first bit of funding on the last day of February 2020, which was an interesting time to raise money for a youth sports company, you know. CHEERING and then two weeks later, the world changed. I don't remember exactly what happened, but some things shut down and, you know, we started. My background in Mojo, we got into it. Ben and I both love sports and I think we both also, more than anything, love getting to interact with how our kids play sports. And so when Ben reached out and said, hey, I want to build a company in this space, of course, like what a fun area to work in, right? And now that I have a son and a daughter, they're six and three, it feels like this really magical time to be working on these products.

It feels like almost everybody to a man, to a woman that I speak to, has a kid in youth sports who begins to see it from the ground level and understand all of the business ramifications that exist, the opportunities that exist. You know, I don't think I've had a guest on here yet who doesn't have two kids who are getting into sports or spent the last 10 years playing.

Yeah, there's this phrase often used in business around share of wallet, but we often talk about this concept of share of life, right. And there's all the stats out there that you know, particularly once your kid gets into competitive sports, you're spending 12 hours a week, give or take, per kid on a sport. So if you have two kids, a day of your week is going to their sporting pursuits and you know, outside of sleep, leisure, eat, like, what else are you spending that much time on? And so it's just this really incredible segment in terms of where people spend their time and their, and frankly their money.

So I'm reading through all the teamsnap one has to offer. So here's how I understand it, right. Because I'd like to get into kind of the individual pieces. You guys are pulling a lot together. To me it seems like you're pulling together what existed in TeamSnap as we know it today. The registration organizations, parent communication schedules. You're adding in kind of the Mojo assets, the live streaming and the coaching tools. You're kind of folding that under 110 and then you're layering or underpinning it all with. I think you said you kind of redeveloped a lot of the architecture AI first. So is that a good read on this, combining two things and then modernizing the tech stack?

Yeah, I think we think of it. I do think there are a lot of roles where they just slam things together. That certainly wasn't the approach we took here. Right. I think that we've asked ourselves what was working in both platforms. What did we need to redesign, use this phrase, purpose built internally, really making sure that we're meeting the need of customers. But yeah, I think, you know, again, we, we think about it. If you think about just like the journey of an athlete in an organization, from the moment that that organization says, hey, I. I'm ready to run a program, I'm ready for people to start signing up through to, okay, great, they, they signed up. I need to put them on a roster, I need to get them games. And then everything that that family does during the course of the season. Yeah, that's, that's exactly what we've rebuilt with TeamSnap one. And I think, you know, to your question on rebuilding sort of the underlying architecture, one of the things we're excited about right now is that the stuff that our customers can't necessarily see, but they will feel the way that we have re architected the product with respect to performance, with respect to rebuilding our data models to be able to take advantage of all that is common is coming with AI. Right. I think TeamSnap is in this very unique position where we do have 30 million people that have been on platform. Right. I'd argue that we have the largest database of amateur sport behavior out there. And so as part of this, we spent a lot of time rebuilding the way that our platform interacts with data, the way our data is stored, the way we're able to access it. And I think at launch and in the coming months, it's going to be really fun to start to show what we can do. Because of that.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's a welcome change. I've said this on here before. I'm in a TeamSnap town. All of my kids activities are running through TeamSnap. So I'm excited to see the new tech. I actually think it's generally been really good for us. Everyone has their nitpicks. I know there's some people out there who maybe talk about some of the tech platforms in the space, felt like they needed to enter the modern age with some of the more modern rapid architecture, the kind of usability it Sounds like you guys are really focused on that for this rebrand.

Yeah, certainly. Architecture and usability, looking at them, some architecture has been a very critical part of what we've done. Right. Are we setting ourselves up to not just build the right products today, but for the next five, 10, 15 years? And I think usability, interestingly, across our space, is an area where there's just a tremendous amount of opportunity. I think there's a lot of great products out there, there's a lot of interesting ideas, but if you look at the quality of user experience, there's just a huge opportunity to do better on that front. And that's been a massive focus for us. How do we make everything easier? How do we make it faster? And it's challenging, right? If you look at the breadth of the tools, particularly the organizations use, there's a lot of features in there. And getting that to a place where someone can just immediately drop in and say, okay, great, I know how to run my organization. That can be a challenge.

I want to get into the live streaming piece and the sponsorship piece because I think they really go hand in hand, and that's kind of coming under one umbrella here, but I'll get one out of the way for existing, like TeamSnap organizations and users. Is this just like automatically they open the app today? We're recording this a few days early. They're just going to see the new experience, be familiar with it.

So glad you asked that. We're rolling this out in the stages. I mean, we've had thousands and thousands of users in the beta application quietly going back a few months. We have quite a few organizations that have been running on the beta. Our plan is to roll this out in a way that is deliberate. So we're going to, with our users can get into the teamstamp application really in two ways. They can come in because their organization said, hey, I want to buy this and use this to administer my season. And they can go to the App Store and say, I want an app to manage my season on their own volition. We're going to start with those folks that are in our B2B group, that are organizations. They're going to get access to the new platform first, and then in the coming months, folks on the classic application will have the opportunity to upgrade when they want. We're going to provide a lot of paths for people to get over at the pace that's right for them. Cool.

All right, so you guys are bringing in the live streaming and the coaching, the library of coaching tools and Resources on the live streaming piece, huge market and opportunity. Where are you guys today? Where are you trying to get to? And you mentioned one of these quotes I have from you here. You mentioned sponsorship and media innovation. What does that mean to you guys and how does that relate to the streaming and the clips piece, the auto highlights, I should say.

Yeah. So I think starting with kind of where we are and what do we see coming from a live streaming or just media capture perspective in general. Because I do want to touch on that too. Right. One of the things we're excited at is I think come next week we will be the only platform where you have all of this functionality, particularly as an organization integrated into a single provider, into a single app.

Right.

And so our consumers will be able to use the same application that they to schedule games, to communicate, to live stream a game, to get access to those highlights. It's all in one place and there is a usability gain that comes from that. But there's also just in terms of what we can unlock, there's a lot there too. Right. Like we know where your games are taking place, we know what your roster is already and that's going to allow us to do some really cool things in terms of what we're able to derive from those streams. And because it's all connected to the organizational software, you're going to start to do CS2 things like open up this media to the organization. So if the parents have opted in, can I give you operator access to that media to use in your marketing materials to send out the top 10 plays of the week to all of your members. And so we're really excited about what putting all that in one place can do. And I do want to call out right. Live streaming is certainly one means by which you can collect video. But the reality is there's. If you go to any sporting field, court, arena, wherever you are, there's people just taking video out of band. Right. They're not using an app like ours necessarily. They're just capturing the penalty kit. They're capturing the last minute of the game. They're capturing the fourth and one play. Right. And there's also the question, like, how do you bring all that in? I think we're thinking about it really. How do we make sure that we get every moment for you as a family owned platform and make it more exciting. And to your question on the brand and the sponsorship side, I think there's this. Brands and sponsors in sports have always kind of had this relationship where like you think of certain Brands almost synonymous with sport. Gatorade, Nike, like it's hard like you think about a Premier League jersey. The sponsors that are on the front right are part of the experience.

And I think you know Jan from Toyota, right?

Every football game, the Allstate hand sitting behind the field goal, right? Like there are these brand placements that are just, you know, you don't get upset, you're like, wow, this is, it's just, it's synonymous with that sport. And I think we're going to start to see similar things in this space. Right where the scoreboard has branding on it. Are we doing digital overlays where if you're playing a soccer game, the little sponsor bars that run along the side of the field, are we putting those in the background? Frankly, it allows us to deliver a technology to folks at a free price point to let them go out there and stream their kid's game and share it with grandma and grandpa without having to pay anything if they're watching it live. And so I think it's going to be a win win for consumers and for brands because the types of things we're going to be able to do are really exciting.

It sounds like talk about the clips and capture everything. You guys have the auto generated highlights. We've highlighted this in the newsletter a few times now. It seems like where the space is going. Being able to condense that raw fire hose of an hour long of a game to just pull out the stuff of key plays or for the case of parents and friends and grandparents and things like that. You're individual athlete. How do you guys. I know that's a difficult technical challenge. How do you guys approach it? Because I could see a world within TeamSnap. Like you said, you have the roster that I can click on my son and now I could see not only his highlights from the last game, but maybe the whole season because everything is tagged with his number, his name, things like that.

Yeah, I think first I want to call it Highlights can mean different things depending on where your kid is in their journey. I just finished coaching my son's U8 soccer team and it was, you know, it was a bunch of 6 year olds that had just moved up to U8. I would definitely call it a learning season. If we were going back and looking at our highlights, there wouldn't be a lot of goals there, but there were a lot of moments. You know, we had a kid who wasn't the best athlete but he had a game where he had a couple of huge saves and like for, for that moment for him, like, that was so exciting. It was so great. There were moments that were funny kids doing cartwheel on the field. And so I do want to call out that highlights the memories of sport, particularly at younger ages, go beyond the incredible place. And so, you know, part of it is we're asking is how do we do that? I think that the technology, frankly, is getting to a place where in terms of, you know, detecting scoring events and being able to detecting shots on goal or and to the basket, going ball, going the hoop. Look, we're starting to feel pretty good that we can do that from a variety of quality of streams. You know, I think some of the advanced analytics, we're still a little ways off in terms of being able to automate a good chunk of that. But I think the other side that we think about it is youth sports is a little bit different than Pro1. We think that parents are willing to help each other. And so if we do detect something and we don't know who it is, can we get someone on the team to say, hey, that was, that was Kyle's goal, right, and tag them in it so the parent knows that something interesting happened. And so we think in the near term there's probably a mix of what we can automate and what parents are just willing to go do to help each other out to help classify that media so that they do know what.

Was going on from a hardware standpoint. Is this all today happening through mobile phones with you guys? I mean, obviously a big piece of streaming is dedicated cameras. Some are fixed. See a lot of portable ones that sticks at a. Every soccer game I go to has a stick with a camera on it. Is that something you guys have on the roadmap or is it, is it all mobile? You think you can accomplish it through all the cameras people are walking around with?

We're going to, we're going to start with the phone. I think that, you know, I'm hard pressed to bet in the long term against what's going to be possible from these phones, but I think we're going to start there. We think it provides some really interesting things out of the gate, but I think in the, you know, very immediate future, you'll see us support external cameras, particularly those that leverage a protocol called RTMP or RTMPs, so that, you know, if you're using your MIO or whatever, you can say, hey, I want to connect to this and we'll take the video feed out of that and we'll run it through our live streaming infrastructure. And run it through our post processing. And yeah, I think we're always interested in deeper integrations with cameras. Right. At the end of the day, what we are striving for is how do we make sure that families on our platform capture every moment that would have mattered to them. Right. I can. Again, I will go back to first party experience that coaching my son this season. He had a game where he scored two goals. Unfortunately, we're not out yet, but man, do I wish I had those two goals on video. And I think that just emotionally asking ourselves the question, how do we make sure that when you go back and look at that, you don't miss those moments? And certainly I think cameras provide a really interesting way to assist with that. And look, dedicating your phone to streaming a game certainly is a big commitment. Right. I think particularly in the modern environment, we have also seen that there are a lot of. There's already signals in the market that people are definitely willing to do that. But for those that do want those cameras, we're going to want to give them that flexibility.

Yeah, I've seen, I mean, we cover them all. I mean, obviously you've had like kind of the bigger tech infrastructure plays where they're fixed cam at the high school or the indoor arenas. But you know, we've now seen somewhere it's a box to hold two people's phones. Phones, it's an app on the phone that can sort of flush the history and only pull out the good stuff. So everyone's got a take on this. I don't know if anyone has like nailed it. I think everyone is trying. It seems like everyone's trying to figure out what is the balance there of using your phone. But also like I occasionally have to send a text message during the game.

Yeah. I think what everyone is realizing, right, is that ultimately these memories right now keep coming back to this are hugely valuable. Consumers enjoy them. There's a monetization opportunity. It's fun. It is an emotional product. And so then the question becomes like, what is the easiest way for us to be able to capture that for you as a parent, what's the lowest friction thing to produce the level of quality that's going to make you excited and your kids excited for years to come.

On kind of the sponsor piece that you just sort of touched on it, I think I read you guys had given like something like $19 million back to. To organizations. I think I have that number right. How much this, this increases engagement with the app. You have your customers on the. On the league and club side. But this now really brings parents and families into the fold. Lot a lot more time spent on app come from a gaming background. You probably get this as much as anybody. A lot more eyeballs, a lot more time. What are those sponsorship opportunities that it unlocks and how do you guys think about it? Are they overlays? Are they interstitial ads? What are all of those opportunities, as you guys view?

Yeah, it's a great question. And I think we often don't do a good enough job about talking about our brand's business in the context of what it has returned to youth sports organizations. Right. $19 million is not a trivial sum of money in the youth sports world. And I think a lot of people are now starting to realize that brands are excited about extending sports sponsorships beyond the pros, into the amateur, into the youth world. But the reality is our team has been operating there for quite a while at a scale. Right. And I think we think about sponsorships and opportunities in this space beyond just digital, right. I think a big part of. Through the acquisition of leagueside, which predated mojo, that allowed us to get into allowing big national brands to deploy physical sponsorships all over the country. I think now we're at this point where we can connect that. Right? So like if you're a brand that just purchased a jersey on a logo, wow, how cool to now actually also be able to see it come through in streams and media again if parents have consented to it. So I think there's just connecting the loop we've already had. And then certainly as we think about the types of sponsorships that are going to come in the future, I think, you know, we, we want to interstitials, I think, like they're always going to have a place, but we'd like to kind of see that maybe come down and we'd like to see it much more integrated kind of into the flow of your use in a way that it makes you happy. Right? It is that scoreboard branded. If there was the play of the game, was it sponsored by someone? If we're generating that weekly highlight reel, our brand's getting behind that. And so I think we just. We see a lot of really fun inventory. And I think also, you know, video, right. Is a big part of this as well. Like the more video that's in the candidly, obviously video advertising, there's a lot more money there. And I think this allows us to give that to brands in a way that consumers will be very receptive to.

Yeah, I can imagine a really cool use case of like, you know, that highlight has a. Has a wipe with the TeamSnap or the club logo. But it's brought to you by Toyota, right. As an example. And if I'm a kid, like not only does that not feel intrusive, it's cool because it looks like what you would see watching an NFL game or an mls.

You finish a Premier League game and I should know who the sponsor is offhand right now, but like the man of the match or the woman of the match. Right. And it's the. I don't know. I'm going to make this up. But the Barclays man of the match, right? Like, why can't we do that for kids?

Right?

Like, that's exciting. Like I just won the same award that a hero of mine and as a pro one and is like that. That to me feels like advertising. That isn't. It's not intrusive and it's kind of fun, frankly.

Yeah. No, I mean it seems like video games did this really well too. Like NBA 2K, I think games like that where they would layer in the Sprite sponsor sponsorship and you felt a part of the game and it was. It was so natural. So it now in real life, probably better to be out playing than looking at the screen. Talk about the coaching resources. I know that's a big part of what Mojo was and it's being folded in here again. It's one of those trends. We've covered this a lot. You're seeing this push to maybe standardize is the wrong word, but really get consistent coaching across different age groups and levels. Some of that is coming from the governing bodies and the pro leagues that want to see development happen in the way it maybe happens in Europe for soccer or. Or the Balkans for basketball. It turns out to be an example. So talk about what you guys offer there and where you see that going and how big of a part that plays in TeamSnap One.

Yeah, I think, you know, it goes like. Think about the three themes that we talk about internally. There's team utility, right? That goes the chat. The what time is the game. There's memories. And then we talk about it in the concept of player development. And over there, we've partnered with, you know, the best names in sports. The NBA, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, USC Soccer, the Premier Lacrosse League. You just. You keep going down the list here. And we have this huge suite of partners that we work with to develop really amazing NFL flag, really amazing content for them, for coaches and our Goal there was, you know, for the coach that's, there's always going to be the paid professional coaches and I think you'll start to see us build more tooling for them where they can bring their own content and expertise. But for those coaches who need help, right, who are in these organizations all over the country, all over the world who sign up and say you know what, I'm going to coach my son or daughter's flag football team next season and they don't know what to do because they didn't play football. Maybe they did. They certainly didn't play flag football. And did they coach 7 year olds in football? Do they remember play like and so what do I do? And I think today, right, people go to the Internet, they search for things. How do you know if it's age appropriate? Can you trust it? I found a drill. It looks great but turns out this should be for 14 year olds. And so what we're trying, you know, to bring to our product is a trusted resource that meets you where you are, right. Like we know the age of your team, you can tell us the skill level of your team. Then can we turn around and curriculum that we've worked on with experts from around the world to make sure that we're giving you things that are perfect for, for your kid.

Talk about no. And I think that's great. And listen as a, as a dad who coaches seven, I coach both my kids but I coached seven year old coach pitch fall ball at 8am on Sunday mornings and you know, again I played baseball and have an idea of the drills but just sometimes having those resources there and I probably don't use, use them as much as I should. Huge, huge unlock because even I find that it seems like even the most well meaning volunteer coaches sometimes are just, they're not, you know, quote unquote good. Not because they're not trying because they have no idea what to do and what's age appropriate. You know, you work a 9 to 5 all week and now you're with kids.

Exactly. And it's not even necessarily we talk about that. One of the Personas we have internally in our research and who we build for. We talk about the harried parent, right? That parent who to your point, they're working 9 to 5. I want this the at best, right, like maybe they're working, they're really lucky. But Practice is at 5:30 and so you're hanging up that last zoom, you're walking out of the office, whatever it is and you're going Straight to practice. And in that 30 minute window. Right. You need to decide in my case what am I going to teach 176 year olds which it turns out I almost always get wrong. But I, you know, I was using at the time our beta app and it's really nice for me to be able to say hey, I've got practice today at 5:30, 15 of my kids are going to be there. Give me some ideas on what to do. Walk me through something that's age appropriate and we have to do that fast because the reality is like there are, there are coaches out there that are going to go through certification, they're going to go through that more advanced development and we need that. But we also need the much larger pool of volunteers who volunteered or was voluntold that they need to coach their kids team this season. Right.

I just got voluntold by the way. It's the only way. My kids got an email that said.

You know, we're not going to have enough teams this season unless we get more coaches.

I got both my kids were waitlisted for basketball. I said but if you can coach the first grade boys, I'll take them both off the waitlist.

So I'm gonna need those coaching resources.

Because I'm less, no less about basketball.

We will get you set up on everything we have for basketball. Don't worry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A couple of other features I'm just kind of reading through here. Predictive scheduling. Talk a bit about that. You say smart, think smart, opt smart, automation, predictive scheduling. We already touched on personalized training content. What does that mean to you guys? So I know there's some others, you know, kind of layering AI and scheduling out there.

Yeah, you know I think we scheduling mean there's, there's many different types of scheduling scenarios in the world of youth sports. Right. There's I'm scheduling an in house rec league and in that world I have to think about, you know, our coaches on multiple teams. Right. Or coaching multiple teams. They have multiple kids that they're coaching so they can't coach at the same time. There's, they tend to be a little bit easier. You get into tournaments and tournaments of different sizes and then you get into, we call it like a league of a league of clubs. Right. So there's a central scheduler that's trying to coordinate schedules across a whole bunch of different organizations for their teams to play in a township. And you know, we've long had a solution there in a, in a product that we have called TeamSnap for tournaments. And now we're just starting to evolve that more and more. And I think we are very excited about what is possible with the foundational models. I'll say we have a lot of really interesting tests running that it turns out these foundational models, by that I mean, you know, take a ChatGPT or a Gemini. They're really good at taking input from a lot of people and then being able to say, hey, you know, I actually had to have. Go have a conversation with 55 coaches. I needed to ask all those coaches, what time do you prefer to practice at? What fields are they? Night of the week that don't work for you, Kyle? And then being able to say, like, hey, I've taken all this in and now I can do something really interesting with the schedule. And you're not going to see all of that on launch day, but I think in the not too distant future, we're going to have some really exciting stuff on. On that front.

Can that be just as easy as, like, literally loading in like, like a transcript of a conversation or an email with coaches or, hey, send us your feedback in plain text and just loading it into. Into a foundational model?

I think it could be even easier. Like, we, we want to take administrative burden off of that operator. Right? Like, and again, anything that involves you moving data into something that means that that burden is there. Right. And so I'd take a step further, which is like, we're going to have all your coaches in the team staff application. Why is our agent not out there asking them, like, hey, I see your coaching again next season. Let's get you set up. It looks like last season you preferred Tuesdays. Is that still the case? You know, do you still prefer to practice at Pinewood Creek Middle School?

Right.

And, you know, we can start to. We don't. We don't really need the organization to take action at that point. Right. We have a million little personal assistants out there helping them try and create the best scenario for, for each one of their coaches. I think at least the operators that I talk to, they are universally, almost always incredibly grateful for their volunteer coaches. And so while it's saving them time, I know that they want tools that make the lives of the coaches easier, too. And so if we can get coaches the experiences that they need, whether it be through education, whether it be through schedules that meet their needs more, it means they're going to come back. And that means that that organization is going to have to send less emails like the one that they're holding over your head of like do you want your kid to play this season? You have to coach.

I got one. Here you go. As a coach I have one lineup creation for baseball or even other sports. Right. I mean because I always found myself the night before messaging and TeamSnap. Please fill out your availability and then creating the lineup. Then invariably it's like Jenga. One kid doesn't show and you pull that rung out and your whole plan is just shot to hell.

Yeah, I think even the we, we had our end of season tournament last week and there's the two 17 minute halves again. We play eight kids at a time and we have 17 kids or 16 kids on our roster or whatever it is and each kid has to play exactly one half. Well you know I'm trying my best but I got some kids that don't want to play the first half and like even tracking all that stuff it definitely some very interesting opportunities there.

One of the things says here it says all right, so can connect together multiple disconnected tools. I think obviously we touched on everything TeamSnap One does and the new platform does. Maybe how would you think about a user's experience or journey prior to today? What are some of those tools? Whether it's Mojo and TeamSnap and maybe some competitors and what does it brings. We know what it brings together now. What are some of the other use cases? Maybe down the road you guys can continue to kind of integrate. So there truly is that that one app because you're going for that. But there's still going to be an edge case here, an edge case there, a product or service here.

Yeah, I mean look in there are areas where I think you could do better. Facility management is an interesting one. Right. And today not a feature of our product, but definitely interesting for a certain class of our, of our organizations. I think there's going to be some really interesting stuff on the financial tooling side that you'll see us pull into into our products. And I think the vast majority of organizations they can do what they need in our system today. But you know, again it goes back to like how do we make the lives of these operators less stressful? And they, they usually didn't get into it because they were really excited about the logistics. They were, they wanted to provide kids with great on field experiences. And so how do we free up their time to do that? And so you know I think that there's a number of adjacencies and look, I actually don't know that there will ever be one platform to rule them all. Right. I don't, for example, see us getting into the world of background checks, but I see us deeply integrating those into our flow and working with a number of people in the space that specialize in safety. Right. I, I don't know that we'll get into some other spaces, but I think the question is how do we integrate the right partners in a seamless way so that in those areas we're not necessarily going to go into. To you as a user, it feels like it's one platform.

That's a great segue because I was going to ask lots of platforms take like Shopify and e commerce or WordPress for websites. We lead with email and I use a service called Beehive. And literally last year, an hour before this, they announced all these new features. They were having to run your entire content business. Right. And what's nice about some of these, you know, these larger tech platforms is they're able to integrate with lots of things. A lot of times that's through an API, that's through Zapier, like off the shelf third party tools that can do that. But you sort of touched on it there. When you, when you think about the background checks, the compliance, we work with some of them anchored and zorts as sponsors.

Right.

How do you guys think about integrating having APIs somewhere it's pulling information in somewhere it's going out. I know you guys know there's some other apps in there that are trying to aggregate schedules from all the registration platforms. Ultimately, parents tend to be at the whim of the league, whichever platform they choose. So if I'm a parent and one of my son's teams is on another one of your competitors platforms, do you think about ways to pull in that data, to push out that data, you know, across not just compliance, but scheduling and cameras and you know, how much of that do you want to own? How much is it like, okay, we could be a centralized hub. I know it's a tricky question and.

A long question, so yeah, it is a very tricky question. Right. And I think candidly, there are things that you can get away with when you're just starting out that like, you know, if we went out and announced tomorrow that we can ingest data from all of our competitors, I think they might not be thrilled with us and they might have a, I might get a few letters the next day. But in general, I think we want to be open minded to allowing people to integrate with and build anything that is accretive and valuable to the users on our platform. Right. And I think that in addition, like, in so much as that we can. And I think we're not quite there yet, but with what we've done with our data, if we can help people produce interesting experiences with the data we have, we're certainly going to look at that. And look, I think, you know, we have integrations running out there today. Both the customers built and then our partners have built. And I think we're going to continue to evaluate how do we make more of that possible. And look again, as long as on our platform, it's making the user experience better. Like, let's talk about what we can do. I do think, you know, this is an interesting space where I wouldn't. My time in HR tech, I wouldn't say it's dissimilar, is like, everyone you get, everyone wants an API. And the question is, do our customers have the means by which to go build against that? And certainly some of them do, but a large portion of them don't. And so a lot of times too, it's like, it's probably not good enough for us to just stand up API documentation and say, go nuts. It has to feel more like an app store or like a Facebook connection where it's just seamless. Right. The user's not stitching anything together. Just like I want to use this integrated thing and I want to sign in with my credentials and that's it. Right. And I think, like, that's the level we also have to get to, just given the type of space we're in.

Yeah, no, that's. It's an interesting view. I didn't think about it from the customer standpoint. Whereas, you know, your customers are parents and league organizers, and it's more partners and third parties who may want the API than your actual customers. That's a good point.

And don't get me wrong, right? Like some of our lead organizers, particularly as they've gained scale and sophistication, they're more than capable of, whether it be getting data out through an API or doing their own things, they're off doing that. But that's not the vast majority of sport yet. Yeah.

Maybe take it a little bit broader for this last little bit here. Well, one more about you guys. I think TeamSnap is 4ish, 4 and a half years in with WAD Capital. Right. I saw Peter on a CNBC interview, I think, earlier this year, and he was asked, hey, IPO soon, right? So I would ask you that. I don't expect like a concrete answer, but, like, what are you guys building towards, you know, what is that time horizon to kind of take things to the next level, whatever that next level is.

For TeamSTEPP, I'm just the guy who's in charge of the ones and zeros, Kyle. I make the Coke now. You know, I think we are very focused and I say this with full, sincere. Like our team internally right now is just every day we wake up saying how do we make this experience better for our sports orgs and for our families? And we don't actually think about that in terms of a quarter, two quarters. We are looking out on a multi year horizon of like, how are we going to realize the ultimate vision for our customers? And if financial things change along that journey, so be it. But it truly is a secondary concern for all of us. I think right now we all feel very fortunate to be in this moment where there is an incredible amount of focus, of capital, of energy coming into the space. And I think in those moments you can either choose to focus on the capital and hype or, or you can focus on building the right products for your customers. And we are very much choosing to focus on the latter. And we think that if we do that well, then the rest will follow.

Now we can maybe broaden the aperture for a sec. What are some of the. Maybe from a tech perspective, right? I mean you're the CTO of one of the largest names in youth sports. So what are some of the tech trends that you see maybe outside of your specific, you know, scope and stuff that's on you guys are doing or on your roadmap that you're seeing in youth sports that excite you?

Oh man, it's, it's, it's hard to, to keep up with the announcements that happen every day. I mean, look, I think we're trying.

In buying sandlot, we're trying to keep people.

You're doing, you're doing a better job than me. Yeah, I think there's a lot. Right. I think in injury prevention and safety, that's a space that. But I find that the technology, there's some interesting things and I think a lot more will be coming. I think if you look at what's happening at the pro and collegiate level, there are some companies out there that have really, really quality intelligence products. And I don't know how much of this we want to bring to the youth level, but the idea that you can build software that helps people win games, that's really, really interesting. Right. At the end of the day, a lot of more competitive teams like that's something that like it changes your business. And so I think we're very excited about some of the intelligence products that are out there. The hardware space is, you know, we talked about this earlier in the call. Incredibly interesting, right? Sensors, wearables, cameras and where all of that data is going to go and what's possible with it now. And I think we would be fools to not be dabbling around in that and playing around with what's possible. I just, it's just right now I think that the creativity is really the only barrier to I think unlocking some solutions that haven't been possible. And so, you know, it's not a direct answer of like, hey, we're looking at this company or I think this. But I'd say like right now we just, we see a lot out there that you know, we kind of look at it. We're like, wow, that's cool. That's really cool. And even, you know, another example I'll give is what's possible with media. Right? Like, I think that the. How do I take that clip of your kid and make it more exciting? I've seen some really fascinating things there in terms of effects and music and you know, I wonder how long it's going to be before we see an app comes out that's like, oh, you missed that penalty kick to win the game. No, no, upload it to our site. We're going to rewrite history for you. You made that kick. Like, I just, it's, it's really cool to see, to see what people are doing right now.

The modern version of everybody gets a trophy.

Everybody scores.

Hey, I took my son, my son had a really good soccer game a couple of years ago and I threw it in imovie and I set it to music and it took me like 12 minutes and it was fine. But yeah, I'm sure AI and some tools can accomplish that better. Now it seems like to me there's probably an opportunity around the coaching resources which are a big part of, you know, what you, what you guys do. I could see a world. I had Matt from, from Huddle on a couple of weeks ago and he, he talked about being able to take some of this cutting edge tech but, and bring it down to the parent volunteer coach level. But some of that is literally coaching, coaching the coaches on how to use it. Right. That seems like another opportunity beyond just here's drills. How can you leverage. What are some resources to leverage the tech to actually use this stuff and make it useful and age appropriate.

Yep. Yeah. And I think there's, you got to be realistic about what is the, what time investment can these people make, right? What are they going to give you? And I think anytime you get into the world of like, I need to spend an hour explaining to you how this technology works and I'm going to have to offer you, you've probably failed in the consumer space again. Going back to the harried parent, that dad or that mom who's leaving work at 5 to coach at 5:30, if that technology is not easy enough to consume that they can understand in that window, it's not ready yet, or you haven't done it the right way. And so I think like, spot on probably in terms of bringing this down to that level. The question is, how can I make it that easy for someone to be up and using?

That's good. Yeah. Speaking of easy to use tech, as we're speaking here, my Hue lights decided to just turn on at first, full, like full brightness. And I have no idea how to, how to get it back.

This is what you get for having this fancy, fancy.

This is it. This is it. Sometimes it's just better to have a light switch.

Right.

Who do you, I always ask Guest, who were some people or companies, not necessarily competitors, obviously, that you admire in the space that are doing cool things that you look to as, hey, this is someone we would consider partnering with or hey, this is a totally different area. But I like what they're doing. I think it's good for the overall ecosystem.

I mean, people and competitors that I look to look definitely a competitor to us. But the guys at League Apps, I think that they, in terms of what they do for community and their authenticity, have a lot of respect for that. I think we look at the collegiate and pro level and teamworks and the team over there and I mentioned the intelligence products, just some really, really interesting things and how they're approaching the space. I think tremendous admiration for all of the hardware companies. Right. Like, what a, an interesting challenge to go solve. And certainly that's a space we're always thinking, like, how do we, how do we partner? How do we go into that? I think, you know, the other side of it though, that I will answer is like one, I think this is a friend of a mentor of mine who's the CEO of a company called ZipRecruiter and he talks about the fact that I'll never judge an entrepreneur. Right. The struggle, the difficulty, they go. And I feel the same way. Right. And so I think anyone in our space is starting A company, it's hard. It is a grind. And I think that's. I think I have tremendous respect for every operator that we work with, right? Like by. My job is by and large glamorous, right. I get to work with cool technology all day. I, you know, sit at a computer and play with things. It's really hard to run a sports organization, right? Like, particularly if you're a volunteer out there, the hours you're putting into it. Unfortunately, parents are not always happy, even if they're vol. Like, and it's. It's hard, right? And it's a labor of love to go out there and to administer these programs. And every time I have to get on a call with one of the folks on our side who operates a league, who operates a club, I always like in my eye, like, this is, this is a hard job. Like what this. And it may not even be your only job. And so, you know, maybe not a competitor, maybe not someone building really cool tech, but like solving problems for kids that are not. Not easy to solve.

I think that's a good place to leave it breed. I appreciate you joining. I'll give you the last word here to kind of sum up TeamSnap One in case people don't know after listening to us. But maybe sum it up, how can people find out more if they're not already a customer? And then if you want to plug your LinkedIn stuff, I know a lot of people like to do that as well.

Well, I mean, I think for anyone who wants to learn more about TeamSnap1, it's really easy. You'll just be able to go to teamsnap.com you're gonna see all kinds of new information about the new platform. I'll be running some webinars this week that take people through the new platform. So I hope that lots of folks will tune into those.

Are you doing those live? Yeah, I guess you are right.

I am doing those live. Those are going to be live demos, nothing pre recorded. So, you know, we'll hope we have enough confidence in the platform that we think it's going to. Gonna go well. But all live demos.

Awesome. Reed, thanks so much for joining.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Kyle.