All right, I want to welcome on Jordan Baltimore, CEO, founder and CEO of New York Empire Baseball. Good to see you.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

We're here AT League apps NextUp event 2025. Feels like I'm seeing more 26 around. You have some recent news about a capital raise and expanding into other sports, but why don't you go into your background founding New York Empire Baseball. It's a really interesting story and then we'll kind of get to where you're at today and where you guys are going.

I appreciate it. About 17 years ago, Woke up one morning and wanted to get in a great workout and had a passion for baseball and watched my own dad help build the baseball fields that I played on when I was a kid and reached out to a youth organization with an offer to rake their baseball fields on Sunday mornings. A few days later, I got an email asking for me to come in for an interview. Didn't have much in the way of raking experience, but went in for the interview and after about two hours, they said you'd be perfect to manage our 8U travel team. And I had never coached kids before, aside from being a junior counselor in a day camp. Once had a great time doing that, but didn't think I was heading into coaching baseball. I told them they probably had it wrong, but I'd go to a practice and see how it went. And two weeks later, I was the manager of an 8U travel team. And roughly two years later, I launched New York Empire baseball.

Fast forward 15 years. You guys are huge in this area. Talk about what you guys have, what you do and how big, how many athletes you service.

So there's over 1,000 kids in the program here in Manhattan, 64 teams. We have after school classes, camps, training classes, lessons, a rec ball league called the club league, which is a pretty special experience for kids for almost all ages and skill levels and then travel teams and other competitive programs.

What are the challenges like in a city like New York where space is at a premium for baseball? I know you guys have a large facility. Do you do more indoor compared to maybe other areas of the country that have more green space to play?

We do everything we can to find fields. And I think partially because we're so active in the community and we have so many children in the program and we find a way to put them all on baseball fields as best we can. We typically, interestingly enough, leave the indoor facility empty when we know it's going to rain especially. We don't look for space rentals. So we kind of approach it a little differently. We want to make sure it's an incredible and inspiring experience for children and families. So instead of renting out the space and then on rain days telling people to stay home, we bring them indoors. So there's never a cancellation. In 10 years of being in our current facility, we've never had a cancellation.

What do you guys have in the facilities? You guys just won't have it booked if you expect rain or whatever. Like, it's just blank.

I mean, typically we don't book it when we have outdoor programs at all. So what do we have going on in there? Nothing. While our teams are on the field, Whether it's rec ball, travel ball, whatever it is, we want to know that there's a fallback so that no one ever gets canceled.

I know you guys have an interesting philosophy about how you approach approach the game. Why don't you talk a little bit about that and then we'll get into where you guys are going next.

For us, the entire organization is built on the concept of process over outcome, right? And we think about things in a framework of inputs, outputs, and outcomes. And what makes baseball so very difficult is not what everybody says, which is it's a game of failure. That's not what makes it difficult. What makes it difficult is that you cannot control the outcome. So you have a great swing, you hit the ball harder than you've ever hit it, and the center fielder catches it, and the box score says you failed. We would say you succeeded. So the way we approach instruction and training and development is from how do we make the inputs and how do we make your work ethic the best it can be? Because, look, baseball's a skill sport. The better you are, the more fun it is. And that's relatively unique. Maybe golf is very similar in that way. If you're not good, it's not that much fun. The same is true for baseball. Only there's also a risk, right. If you're standing at third base and you don't know how to field a ground ball, it's scary. Nobody wants to play a game that's scary. So our approach is to individually and uniquely focus on every age and skill level to improve their gameplay and improve the experience.

You guys recently took on some capital to expand. Expand that philosophy into other sports. Talk about that process and why now is the time that's right to go beyond baseball.

And look, it's not only beyond baseball. I mean, we want to do. When we think about the world, we think about it in terms of or the future of our world in terms of breadth, depth and geography. Breadth. How do we take our culture, our values, our approach to other sports? Look, we spent 15 years not going into other sports because we felt that our organization was built partially on what we say, culture, content and coaching. If we don't have the proper content and we don't feel strongly about our ability to teach that content, we don't just move into another sport because we have the relationship with a family. So the opportunity to build or buy and move into other sports with our platform, with our culture, with our values was meaningful. And I think the opportunity is there for that. But also in terms of depth and geography, what more can we be doing within baseball and softball that would be meaningful to continue to enhance the experience and inspire players? And in terms of geography, every time we've piloted our program in other cities, it's met with some fantastic response. And we know there are some like minded operators out there throughout the country and we've approached them and we'll be building out RISE partners in that platform across the country with like minded and similarly cultured organizations.

Guys prefer to buy or build both.

So it's going to be a hybrid model of organic and inorganic growth.

Okay, and then do you, I mean, I'm assuming the answer here is both as well. But like, do you prefer to expand baseball's footprint or be able to expand through other sports?

No, it's definitely both. I mean, look, baseball is near and dear to my heart, but the culture and values and the inspiration and the experience that we've provided, at that point, if we have the expertise, the sport becomes the medium for making and inspiring children on and off the field.

How do you handle the branding for New York empire?

That's a great question. If there's an existing brand, I'll give you an example. If we find an operator who we love and they love us and the combined resources make sense and they have a great reputation built on their character in another market, we are not rebranding them. There's no reason to. For new locations here in New York and nearby where the brand means something to people, we'll absolutely continue to maintain the brand. But ultimately everyone will fall under the umbrella of RISE partners. And RISE is short for Relentlessly Inspiring sports experiences.

What are the sports you're targeting?

I mean, look at the outset, I think volleyball, lacrosse, basketball, they all make sense to us, among others.

Why is now the time right to take on capital? Is that something you were Seeking out or something that came to you. I mean, this is a market that lots of investors across the stack are interested in. Why now for you guys?

So look, we were genuinely at an inflection point in our organization's growth. We see the demand, we can't keep up with the demand. It's a great problem to have. It's only a great problem to have if you can solve it. So when we thought about what we needed to grow, we weren't actually looking for capital. If we were going to take on outside capital, it was going to have to come with intellectual horsepower and resources that we couldn't provide on our own to grow and scale. And scale was more important to us than growth. We knew how to grow. Scale means we can do more of what we do more efficiently. And that meant to me that if, if the right partner came along, we would consider something. And when Shore Capital approached us, their focus wasn't on our financial statements. Their focus was on our culture. And they are obsessed with their own culture the way we are with ours. And the overlap in those cultures and the values was 100%. So it became a no brainer for us to move forward.

It seems you guys have it figured out. I mean, a lot of money's coming into the space and think it's like kind of those instant 10x100x tech type returns. But you know maybe as well as anybody what it takes to coach and develop athletes. And I always call it like the ground game that's needed in your sports. Talk about why that's important and why maybe some people coming into the space think it might be easier to just scale and grow a huge business that if they're coming from a software background, doesn't always apply to sports.

Look, in our case, and I'll speak very specifically about our organization, we try to individualize every experience. And is individualization as scalable as this mass market approach? Absolutely not. So from our vantage point, if you want to genuinely inspire every individual player and every individual team, that's not as scalable as the software approach. Right. Build once, sell many times. Are there pieces that can be scalable?

Sure.

Can you scale the culture and the platform? Absolutely. But ultimately, the reason why we're taking the approach we are, which is to partner with great operators, is because we genuinely understand that the real investment needs to be made in the operators, not in the, in the property and the plant and the machines. Because that won't actually, it's, it's not where the rubber meets the road. And that's where anyone coming into this industry thinking about scaling will fail if they're not investing in. In the coaching staff.

How much do you use tech and AI to help individualize and scale that individualized culture? You guys have process. You guys have.

We've always invested heavily in two things, research and training and technology to go out and scale the experience. So every day we're using it more and more. Most of our tools are homegrown. We've built them internally because it was the most genuine way of connecting with our families, with our players, certainly with just how quickly AI is being adopted and how accessible it is. We're exploring it every day as to how it can continue to enhance the experience, but maybe not replace the human element.

We're at League Apps. Next up. I know you guys work with league apps. Why don't you shout out your partner here and what do you guys. Why do you like working with them?

I'll tell you, I think many people know this about me and about league apps and Jeremy often says I was a League Apps fan before I was a partner. I was very intrigued by their approach. Again, culturally. Their approach was to raise all the boats and then have the software be a vehicle for helping people to succeed in this industry. So the fact that they're out every day looking to make the experience for children and families better met so well with us that even before we were using their software, we were a fan of what they did.

The last one, where do you guys. What's the end goal? 3, 5, 10 years where you want to be with Rise and Mr.

I mean, it's actually. It's going to sound very simple. When people think about the best experience, the most inspiring experience for young athletes, I want the first name in their mind to be Rice.

Awesome.

Good spot to end it. Jordan, thanks for joining.

Thank you.

All right, want to welcome on Tyler Kreitz, founder and CEO of Focus on the Field. Tyler, welcome to our. I don't know if it's a full podcast, but welcome to our little sit down here at Nexus.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here and really, really, like I said, impressed with what you guys are doing. It's a great community and a great newsletter.

Appreciate it. Why don't you talk a little bit about your background.

Sure.

How you got to focus on the field and what you guys do.

Okay.

It's gonna be a long one. I started Focus on the field in 2019, but what led me to get there was a background, a very different background in I was a Youth admissions enrollment director at a prep school. I was director of a QA lab. I studied biology in college, worked in the labs at pharmaceutical facilities, then was a QA director. I had this presence of just operations, like making sure things run and run on time. And I always loved sports. Fast forward to 2017. I was in the startup space in the San Francisco area. I was a part time, like, you know, coach for one of the lacrosse clubs out there, advanced lacrosse and the startup. I was at hockey stick the wrong way. And so I was just networking with the director, Chris Rotelli. Hey, would you be interested in helping me network? He asked me if I'd help him run advance. And I said, you know, it's interesting. Maybe I'll do that for a few months. And never thought where it'd go, but thought maybe it'd help him out, see what happens. This has a point. I'm getting to it. That's in 2017 was like my first immersion into like this youth sports industry. And when I got there and I worked with Chris and I looked at like, what was going on with youth sports, I was like, holy cow, this is crazy. And I was in charge and tasked with running his operation as smoothly off the field that it was running on the field. And so I was like, okay, that's what I started doing. And I just dove into it, loved it. I understood the essence. What had to happen with the communications, registration, all the management, all the. Just the white glove service that you need to give. As I was doing that for the next three years, I noticed that we were really good at it because he could afford me, but there are other people were s shows, but I won't swear, I don't know if this is going to go out to youth. It was just. It was a real issue. And so when I was there, I looked at it and I said, okay, there's a problem I could solve. And so in the fall of 2019, launched a pilot project with a local club, Alameda Lacrosse Club in the Bay Area, still a client of ours, with the idea of, hey, we will do the work so you don't have to do it. And they're like, yes. From there we just started scoping out and discerning what it is that makes sports run. Leveraging my background, leveraging the operations experience I had in advance and just provided to essentially make an egg McMuffin of services we could repeat and deliver over and over.

I feel like so many people, every story about getting into the youth sports space is either you have kids and and you see it on the ground level or you're involved with the program or you're like, oh my God, this is on field part is great. But what's behind the scenes is. Yeah, what is the product and service today? What specifically do you guys offer?

So we are a professional services firm providing like essentially outsourced business services for youth and amateur sports organizations. So if you and I need an admin because we're running a soccer club, we can do it ourselves. We could hire somebody or call Focus on the field. You have an admin now. And we deliver general admin services, registration, communications and managing the website and tech stack. That little quadrant of services is what makes up running the business of sports. We provide that as a service to organizations all over the country. We now also add social media and marketing services. We partner with club capital to provide financial services. So essentially anything that happens off the field to make sports work, we do as a service and we provide this across the country. And the way I like to look at it is for clients who come to us, they're looking for help. They either need to scale or they need. They're drowning. And we're the easy button. Just tell us what you want done, we'll take care of it for you.

So much an event like this at NextUp and elsewhere in the space, there's so much investment interest in tech and automation and AI. And what you're describing is definitely more manual and labor intensive. Talk about the why behind what you guys are doing and then where, like how tech can fit into what you do.

So we are absolutely a tech enabled service. Like we have to be, you know, just our internal tech stack is off the shelf pieces and some proprietary stuff that we build to make sure that our service that we provide is efficient and deliverable. But we have to work with and leverage all the existing tech programs that are out there. League apps for instance. League apps, been a great partner. We partner with them. We are tech agnostic, right? We are Switzerland to a degree and we work with every single program. We know the good ones, we know the bad ones, we know everything in between and we'll recommend them as needed. But all those services, they have to exist, but they have to be. It's almost like I feel half these organizations have a gym membership and they go once a year. They have this incredible potential. Some of the web and tech services they have, but they're not using them correctly. And if you don't have the right people operating the right levers and communicating the right way, your program will falter as much as there is so much tech investment in tech in sports. If the power outage hit, the one thing that would keep going on is youth sports. Because you can still show up with a pencil and paper and be like, be at the field at this time. I'll be there. We can still run our program.

I think there's some similarities with operating youth sports, the media business that we're in.

Right.

And I always compare that to like being a baker. Right. Like the product in sports is. Is what's happening on the field.

Exactly.

It's. It's our newsletter or podcast. And in sports are. When you're a baker, like you got to be in at 4am every day remaking the product for the next day and like to have that skill set is very different than the back office administrative skill set, which is where you guys are coming.

Absolutely.

How important important is communication between? Because I know sometimes like the operator of youth sports is more sports minded on the field minded, like, absolutely. How important is that communication to be able to like, we got to do what we do. You do what you do.

Well, the way we work is we embed it with and become part of the team. Every one of our clients has a dedicated person. So the Kyle and Tyler soccer club, guess what? Our dedicated Annie or Eric, our person is our account manager. They're part of our team. They're backed by an operations team as well. But it's like, hey, you know, they're going to happen.

They're your lead.

They're going to be our person. Even at our domain. We'll even set the domain up for you, like the email for you. But it's going to be like having another employee. Like, look, we like to say we're going to send you an invoice and deliver you an employee team. But it is so important that communication piece. If you've never worked with people who don't work in your office, we have to train you a little bit. There's a bit of a training operation there. And the tailwinds of COVID and as people got used to working outside of the office, that helped us. But if there's not a solid communication between us and our admin, that's on us. We have to make sure those channels exist. And sometimes it's difficult for those operators to do it because it's like, why can't you read my mind? Well, we can't, but we can certainly do the best we can to know what's coming up so we can have you at least preface and prompt you with here's the decisions I need you to make. So I know these things are coming. Because the thing I'll go into is as varied and crazy as sports are. The uniformality when you strip everything away of the operational calendar and what needs to get done. 90% similar.

What is the primary use case or service that. I mean I know you guys touch lots of areas of someone's business, but what are like the one or two or three things that like it's like, okay, everyone needs help with this or every one of our clients.

One of the first things we always do is we say we will take over your admin or info email inbox day one. Like just don't stupid. Like that's the communication is so key. People just want to hear. And 90% of those questions are FAQs. But let the parents, let the people know we hear you. We're gonna get back to you. We're listening to you. That's all they want. So that's number one, that's a very day one. Number two, managing and leveraging your registration platforms, understanding and getting your registration system set up, set up correctly and running right. We do that really quickly. And then usually when we try to look at like we always for our day one service and our onboarding process, we always ask give us our five biggest fires or five most urgent tasks or what are the things you just want to point and click say please get that off my plate. Communication, registration. And then generally some. Generally it's some sort of managing the website tech stack just to make sure that's up to date and present because it gets triaged down. In sports especially, there's always a tyranny of the urgent always coming up. And there's always that parent you need to get back to. There's always that field you got to get things. There's always that next thing because you have practice to get to that night.

And it always feels like the website is like last. I know with my kids sports like the will be updated like the day before the season with dates for the upcoming season and not just schedule stuff like sign updates. And it's always like last minute and you're like scrambling two weeks out like can I register for this? When's it starts?

Yeah, and it's understandably so. It's understandably so. I mean I get it. People have the urgent part of what people are doing is to put their. I mean put their attention on the field with the players, the parents, the kids. That's where Their time should be spent. And so doing this stuff is incredibly necessary, but it gets triaged down because, hey, I can do this. But you know what, I gotta go set up cones.

How much do the League Apps of the world? I imagine they like the presence of you guys because you were there to kind of educate people who maybe aren't leveraging all the tools or using them at all.

I can't say, like League Apps has been an incredible partner with us. And like Jeremy and Brian, when I was building this idea out, I've been at every NextUp conference, first with advance and then subsequently with Focus on the Field. And every time as we were starting this, they were really bullish on it and they said this is great because guess what, where their CS customer service department ends, they're a software company, they can't do all the work for you. But there's a gap sometimes between a League Apps and their clients. We fill that gap and then we make their product stronger. And also we work with a lot of League apps clients and all of other clients. We know their platform probably as well as they do and we're going to come back, hey, these are the holes we're seeing and so that like we, we value those relationships immensely and I think, I hope that we're providing a service for them. Every software company wants to say that their system is so easy and they.

Are, but still, especially now is like they're all adding more features and there's more things you can do. And if you're, again, if you're a coach or out on the field all the time, like it's hard to keep up with that stuff.

Again, I always think that software, especially sports software, is something that the operators survive in, they don't thrive in because again, they just need it. You need them to take the payment, take the registration so I can get the kids to know where to show up. That's what you need it for. Then the bells and whistles riding on is incredibly great, especially as programs are getting more and more sophisticated. Don't get me wrong, they're very useful, but the core element of what they're providing is something that the clients need just to. Again, you're registered, I'm going to communicate with you, I'm going to tell you where to go and if you can provide me that, that's fantastic.

You guys, you guys are bootstrapped, right?

Yeah.

A lot of capital floating around the space.

Yes.

You can go out there and in the networking hall and you could tell who the capital guys are. Guys and girls, right? And you could tell the sports guys and girls are why bootstrapped thoughts on taking capital? Like, what's the. Give me your thoughts there.

I mean, bootstrapped because it could. I started this with four months of capital or four months of Runway, a deck and some. A very cultivated network of angels and advisors that said, hey, I think you should doing this. I mean, I owe so much to the group of people who helped me who were advising me in the early stages of this and were ready to invest. But I kept. And they said just keep pushing the Runway out. And I got comfortable reinvesting it. So it's a comfort thing. Almost ended my marriage. So the reason of why I'm doing this in that sense of why. Why not do it? Well, to be fair. Wait, Frank, we're not sexy. I live in Silicon Valley. I'm not building quantum quantum computing or AI right now. It's like nobody wants to pay attention to me.

Yeah. We just had Dave from Onsites in here and he said everyone's there looking for the next open AI, like youth sports and especially, you know, more of a service business is almost foreign.

Dave is fantastic. I actually am on Dave's advisory board now. And like, because what he's doing.

So am I.

We're on AI, what Dave's doing again, we partner. We are in the same thing. Agnostic solving a problem. So we bootstrapped because we could. Will I if I find that, like, I always felt as building this business, I wanted to prove it first before I take somebody's money. So we spent five years first proven, like, hey, can we do this? And it's like, great, now can you scale it? Okay, we can start scaling now. It's like, great. I have this torch lit. Is there somebody, if I find the right partner to put some gasoline on this, would I consider it? Yes. I'm an unabashed. Like, I am building this not just as I see a business, but I want to support for my family. I live in the most expensive place in the world. It's where my home was. I have two boys. One of them has some special needs that I need to account for. So like, I'm extremely motivated to do what's right. I'm not like doing this because out of some machismo things, like I could do it and I just kept doing it. And if the right person comes around, I'd certainly consider it. But it's gotta be buying into like what our vision is. And our vision is we wanna provide those moments of Delight for our partners, whether they're rec, whether they're for profit, non profit, it doesn't matter. When we get our customers say, oh, thanks. That's it. That makes it for us. Hey man. Thank you. I get to go now. Great.

Awesome.

That's it for us. That drives our entire company.

Last one. So where are you guys? How big are you guys now and then where do you want to go? Right.

So we're at about 60 to 70 clients and we now have the ability to offer projects. So that's why the name subscription service clients and then also projects that we do we about. I'd like to get to 150 to 200 in the next two years. We have grown.

What's the type of project you would take on versus like a recurring.

Our soccer club. We're moving from software X to software yeah. New website build. Can you do that for us?

Done.

We need to get all our registration forms in for, for our lacrosse tournaments we're signing up for. Can you do that for us? That's a project definitive end date and we do that. We're doing that more and more now versus our annual subscription service. We're doing a full set of like, like having an employee nine to five year round. So that's where our goal is. I have grown this through word of mouth. I mean you're, you're talking to the head of HR and marketing and sales until the past six months. So we're starting to, you know, as long as I invest correctly and back into the company and we're going to start expanding a little bit quicker. But I prefer slow and steady as opposed to getting out over our skis. But it's just going the right way.

What do you, what do you guys get out of an event like NextUp?

We've gotten a client out of this every year we've come.

No kidding. There you go.

So there's an end direct answer. But also the community at NextUp is fantastic. I love the folks at league Apps. I come back here, it's like a reunion I've enjoyed each year. It's very friendly, it's very welcoming. I learned something new and I just appreciate them putting this on. It takes a lot of time and energy and it's not like some massive revenue generation machine. I'm sure they make some. But the whole point of just bringing people together to have these types of conversations, meet folks in person, that's invaluable. When we meet our clients, we like to go. I will go out and visit them and Meet them in person so they know we're more than just behind the screen. We have clients in almost every state, and we're getting there. So it's like, I also don't mind traveling, but that element of just being able. Hey, you're a person. We're here for you. We trust you. We're here to work for you. Having those personal interactions is key, and that's what's why sports are so important. You can't do it on your. You can't just do it on your screen. You have to be on the same field. You have to be in the same place as somebody. So having this type of opportunity to do it on the business side just makes sense. It's so correlated with what we're. What we're all so passionate about.

Well, I will look forward to seeing our buying Sandlot conference.

Already in. Already talked. We're in. We're in.

I knew Paul was on it.

Oh, I know. Absolutely. Absolutely. We could. I. I'm excited. I think it's gonna be great.

Tyler, thanks for. Thanks for stopping by.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me, man. You guys keep it up. You guys are doing a great job.

Thanks. Appreciate it. All right, want to welcome on Andy Hayes, founder of Go4. Andy, thanks for stopping by our. It's not a podcast. It's like our little mini pod booth here at nexup.

Love it.

Why don't you give your background briefly and then what you guys are doing at Go4.

Sure. So my background in my former life, I was a high school biology teacher and head lacrosse coach at Episcopal Academy outside of Philadelphia. I started a company called NexSports that grew to be one of the biggest lacrosse operators in the country. It was sold to 3Step in 2020. And then along the way, I had this idea for health and participant safety. And so we started building Go4, which essentially is a infrastructure for participant health and safety. Our customers are tournament operators, schools, leagues, club teams, anywhere where a medical or healthcare provider needs to be on the sideline. Our tagline is every sideline everywhere. We believe that the future of safety is not just about compliance around the administrative side, like background checks, anti abuse training, all that stuff. We believe that there's a whole nother level to participate in health and safety, which is actually on the field, and that you need to have an athletic trainer present who can implement an emergency action plan and ultimately take document injuries.

So, yeah, you talked about, like, the difference between sort of like software compliance. You know, that's the maybe prevent, preventing. Right. Or trying to be productive and then there's like stuff's going to happen on the field. You guys are tackling that much harder challenge because it's boots on the ground. Talk about like scaling and building and growing that type of business versus a more software based.

Sure. So we have currently have 25,000 athletic trainers on our platform. We are the largest job board in the country for athletic trainers. So it starts with building a community around a healthcare provider that has been somewhat overlooked. People don't know that athletic trainers go to school for six years, they have master's degrees, they are trained and educated in virtually all aspects of medicine. You know, and they are, we think the key to participant health and safety. As the youth sports bubble explodes, you know, there's going to need to be some sort of requirement and, or solution to helping kids, participants, whoever it is, at these massive events, deal with injuries or in some cases worse than that, you know, being able to respond.

Yeah, especially with the, I say with, I would think with the professionalization of youth sports like that expectation is more built in. I show up to the park with my kids, like I'm sort of just not expecting, expecting that to be the case. But if I go to a for profit tournament with 3,000 kids playing like you expect or some baseline of service there.

Absolutely. And that's what we did back at next. We had an athletic trainer at every club practice, every tournament was staffed with a healthcare provider. We had emergency action plans for every event, every club practice and we documented every injury. Those three things we believe are going to be the foundation for what is the next step. And you know, you referenced the professionalization of youth sports. We think about it more in the context of you want to be a real event operator, a real provider, then you need to have athletic trainers, you need to have an emergency action plan and an emergency action plan that is shared with all the stakeholders that are there, like bringing them into. Because when something bad happens, you got seconds, you don't have minutes and 911 call, which was what most people do. Now that takes time and you need to be able to respond quickly to the event. And that's where we believe the athletic trainer focus. And building that community of athletic trainers is going to be very important.

So is it just all medical or does that include like, like cris, like other sorts of crisis that could happen?

A proper emergency action plan has contingencies built in for all those things, weather and like because you know, it's not just about being venue specific, it's about being sports Specific, right. The EAP for a eight year old flag football game is going to be way different than a lacrosse showcase. Injuries are different. All those things like you have at a, at a lacrosse showcase you have the potential for head and neck injuries. Like some very serious things happening. Getting hit in the chest with a lacrosse ball, like all of those types of things. An emergency action plan is done, right. Should be shared with the operator of the venue. Whether it be from the facility, it should be shared with every athletic trainer. And those are, that is basically the response to a given situation and in theory makes it for a better result or a better outcome.

It's almost like you have to grow through two different routes, right? You have to attract athletic trainers to come on the platform, right? And then you got to grow towards operators. How do you market? Obviously you market differently but like how do you go about approaching each? Because that's like a, that's a critical mass of an athletic trainer. It sounds like you guys have. And it's not easy. That's much different than showing up to an event like this and finding someone to partner with and use your service at their event.

So the at community, I mean that's really the way we've done it, is built it around the community of a healthcare provider. We're champions of athletic trainers. We believe, believe that they are going to be critical to as all this money flows into youth sports in all different levels, that the athletic trainer is going to need to be on the sideline of these games, matches, tournaments, all those things. And so building the at side takes trust. You know, like that the largest job board in the United States for athletic trainers, it pays them very quickly, right. We have other ancillary services that we built in them to support them in their profession, whether it's the digital, you know, warehouse for credentials and licensure and things like that. And on the job poster side, you know, we primarily work. We have over 10,000 customers. We have. Half of them are schools, half of them are youth sports operators and facilities and things like that. On top of our.

You get that sort of sale so quickly. I mean you're like listen.

So yeah, one I think that the regulatory tailwinds are asking those types of questions of people now. And we've had a lot of word of mouth. We don't really have a sales or marketing team yet. Organically, people need to know how to hire athletic trainers. And I think the legacy solution to that was smoke signals or who do you know?

Kyle?

And then you're like Andy, text this person and then, you know, and all of a sudden you're doing that versus here where you can post a job. And right now you get an application inside 12 hours from an AT and all over the country. So it's a solution that is necessary. And then I think what becomes more relevant to any operator in the country is the emergency action plan and the documenting of injuries in real time to support any sort of situation or incident that happens.

How do you guys build the emergency action plan? Right, because on one hand, like you're bringing the athletic trainer, but they're there for a job, a short term gig.

How do you work? So we have two pathways. The first one is our platform automatically generates an emergency action plan based on Google Coordinates. So at the very least, if you were to launch a baseball tournament, at the very least, right, at some venue, let's say a park or things like that, you referenced the park rolling up to some neighborhood park. At the very least, that athletic trainer will have the closest ems, police, fire services in the palm of their hand attached to that individual job. It is on the job poster to then enhance the emergency action plan. Now, like a community park probably doesn't have an emergency action plan right now, but United Sports Training center out in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, they absolutely have an eap. So they would be able to upload that EAP directly into the job and the AT would have access to that as it relates to injury records. The emr, we're really the first ever sideline EMR like we are built for somebody's phone on the sideline in the moment. What's truly novel about the EMR and the injury documentation tool we've built is that it's shareable with the parent in real time. So you take your kids to an event, they see Ellis at the end, they'll say, Kyle, would you like access to your injury record? This is completely novel. So now we give you access to a encrypted HIPAA compliant database where you and only you can access your kid's medical or injury report for the next step in the care journey. Whether it be the ER where a clinician and not some coach or some ref or some parent has filled out this form. And you know, right now what happens is, is like they fill out a piece of paper and it goes on somebody's desk with phi with personal health information on it, which is not HIPAA compliance. So together the key is the athletic trainer, right, because that's going to stop the worst case scenario. But the other two pieces are just as instrumental to creating an environment that is safe in the real world, not in the cloud on the administrative side. And that's really the big difference of what we're doing with a lot of other people.

Are you seeing all this investor interest and the professionalization of esports that serves as a tailwind for what you guys are doing? Because. Cause it's like it's now table stakes.

It's not even. It's. There's. There, it's that side of it. But also the regulatory wins are changing. Like you need to have a. In some cases you need to have, whether it's return to play, you need to have an aed. People need to be certified in cpr. Like this is changing like the world around youth sports with all of this capital coming in, you know, with all of the expectations. If I was a parent and my kid got hurt at an event and there was nobody there to tend to the like, how is that going to be acceptable in 2025 or 2026?

Are you guys self funded and bootstrapped or did you guys.

Yeah, we're, we're self funded, profitable. We continue to, to grow smartly. But the reality is, is that, you know, we get somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 new customers every day with very limited marketing resources. You know, the athletic trainers, we fill 95% of our jobs on the platform. And I think the, the key there also is this underlying data set which is going to become very, very important around emergency action plans and document an injury. So we are moving one step at a time.

Do you think there's integration potential with platforms like league apps where you have venues and player and parent data like so the players, coaches and operators can see that in addition to trainer.

So right now our solution has its own unique dashboard that is the job posters can see and things like that. But there's a world where this would potentially integrate with something like league apps or something like any registration software that's out there or somebody's how they run their club team. I think the registration software world is super fragmented. Right. There's a lot of players. Everybody's looking for the next thing to like make sure their registration platform is the one that's taken. But it's really hard to get people off a single registration platform because it's their whole business.

Right.

It's very, very sticky. I live this, I know this. We were a league apps customer at NEXT for a very long time. So I think the challenge is yes, but also building 10 integrations into 10 different registration software platforms. Is going to be, is going to be hard and everyone's going and who wins, who's still around like. So we are really focused on building this safety grid or the infrastructure of Participant health and safety somewhat on an island until we figure out how that's all going to work together, how to hook in.

I think a lot of these platforms will eventually over time think more about their APIs and integrations because there's so much more tech around it. It's the only way they can go to kind of keep, keep growing 100%. Last one. What do you get out of coming to an event like NextUp?

So I actually spoke at the first NextUp conference and I had not been back until this year. I came this year to just sort of take a temperature around health and participant safety. I wasn't looking to necessarily strike a big deal or any of that stuff. It was more to talk to people and find out how they view this. Because you know, a lot of people don't necessarily view athletic trainers and EAPs and EMRs as the top of their priority list. They think about it as an operational expense. And unlike in high schools where almost 50 kids have died on the sideline in some way in the last couple years.

Right.

That really or we haven't really heard about it at the youth sports level, but that's going to change. And so this was more of a fact finding mission for me that he think about our people here because. Because when we were at NEXT we had a full time director of health and participant safety and we were 12 years earlier than where we are today. Like that didn't exist. And so I think it remains to be seen how we fit into the ecosystem. But I am confident that participant health and safety is going to become the number one topic for this type of conference in the next few years.

Andy, thanks so much for. Why don't you plug away we're to going people find you.

Oh yeah. If you need an athletic trainer www.gofor.IO hit us up. We'll get you figured out.

Thanks so much for joining.

Thank you man. Appreciate it.

Yeah, of course. All right, want to welcome on Dave Yu, founder of OnSides. Dave 2 time first 2 time guest on buying sand live.

Yeah.

Honored podcast, whatever this is.

Yeah.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

Thank you. So last time we talked we talked about your beta rollout for on size platform meant to aggregate lots of these management platforms like TeamSnap, Sports Engine and now League apps. So why don't you talk about a little bit about the product and now how things are going since the launch of the beta.

Yeah, it's been a great month. A little bit over a month that we rolled out the beta, got tremendously positive feedback as we expected in this beta stage. It's really the support of all the apps. We have five that we're supporting right now and every one of those is been received very positively. We have a lot of people interacting with the AI assistant, sometimes sending us really funny screenshots of feedback that they got from the assistant. So it's been a very positive and very exciting month or so since the beta launch.

What are you seeing as like one of the one or two primary use cases so far? Because the app, it can do a lot and I know you have plans to do more in the future, but like what right now I was like, okay, that is unexpectedly what people are using it for or expectedly.

Yeah, I'd say I'll do one of each. The expected one is the calendar sync. So I actually sent out a survey asking what are the features that you use the most? And the phone sync was the top one, which was our bet is that parents love to use their phone calendar and we can provide that plumbing that goes into it. That's the number one expected feature. The second one is the game day concierge that provides extra detail, what uniform to wear, extra notes, specific field location, drive time. People have told us that it's kind of fun. Like we get this special push notification that says, hey, it's game day. And here's some, here's what you need to know. That has really resonated positively with parents. And that was a little bit unexpected.

You guys, when we talked first time, you talked about how the more platforms you guys can integrate, the more useful the app becomes because it simplifies that much more complexity. So you came out of the gate with support for Teamsnap, Teamsnap and Sports Engine this week, conveniently or coincidentally or not, League apps is available. So talk about that piece of it.

So some of it's kind of a no brainer, right? The more integrations that we have, the more consolidated everything can be for the parent, the much more useful it is. And we are getting some feedback saying, when are you going to do Lee Gas? When are you going to do this? Because the power of what we do, I think parents are starting to see the big picture, right? Like, wow, I can manage my schedule and my logistics in one place. And so in a way it's creating that sort of, if only this was integrated. And so that naturally opens up growth opportunities, market share and retention. Right. I mean parents can go to just one instead of one. And this, you know, it goes without saying that we have a much more engaged parent.

So you were, you were telling me before you're from California, from Silicon Valley. And a lot of the, the youth, youth sports is obviously everywhere, proportionately to the population in the US But a lot of the, I want to say like the brain of it right now is happening on the east Coast. You've been here now twice in two weeks. What are you seeing as kind of the Silicon Valley mindset coming into a space that is in some ways there's people that have been for 20, 30 years operating sports and then you have this influx of capital and tech technology and there's like two very different crowds coming together. The new people and the kind of the legacy folks. What's that been like?

It's been very eye opening for me. We started on sides in July and one of the things that I had to do was jump into the space to see what it's like. I mean from all walks of life, from the operators to the coaches to the software services to the money. I mean it's, it's a huge spectrum of different folks. And I think, yeah, coming from the West Coast, Silicon Valley, it's, it's known for disruption, it's known for pushing the envelope on certain things. And my reception to, when I bring that up to folks, I think there's this, it's interesting, there's a bit of a mixed reaction. Right. Look, youth sports at its core has been. Sports in general is very, very regimental. You got to find the field, you got to find the coaches, you got to get the players. Right. A lot of that is very evergreen, right. That's not going to change. People have seen what onsite is trying to bring into the mix and had, you know, kind of wow, okay, like someone's actually thinking a little bit outside the box to make the parents lives easier. So it's been a very interesting reception when I've talked about what we're up to.

These are different sort of investment bets than maybe the traditional Silicon Valley investment which is, you know, looking for the next a ,thousand X on AI type opportunity. The investments, whether it's private equity or VC or angel investors in youth sports, little bit like there, there seems to be a much different bend and goal with that investment. Talk about what you're seeing there because I'm noticing it just walking around down there that people are talking different about involvement and Culture, which I don't know, I'm not from there, but like, I imagine the conversation are a little bit different when you're looking for those huge bets.

Yeah. If I kind of take a step back and look at the investment landscape of youth sports, it's interesting because I think there's kind of a reverse mentality coming from the Silicon Valley side versus say the east coast youth sports kind of New York City is a big place for media and some technology and a lot of investment on the West Coast. It's like the investors there, the institutional investors, they need to be educated on the youth sports market. They don't really know at a visceral level that it's a huge, burgeoning and constantly growing market, even in just the US So that education needs to be sort of. It's kind of a preamble to a lot of my conversations with them over here. It's like the opposite. Like they know what's happening in U sports, but the disruptive nature of technology is something that I think they have to get a little more comfortable with. So it's almost like this reverse effect of the type of investors that I'm talking to and trying to kind of get behind what we're up to.

What's on the roadmap near term for you guys? What features services are you guys looking to expand into?

We're preparing our general release, our public launch. Our goal is the winter sports season and you know, we've got a lot of box checking that we have to do along the way. But yeah, we're heads down getting our general release out hopefully by the winter season.

Last one we're at next up here at League Apps in New York. What are you getting out of this event? I know you were at John Wall street event last week. What are you getting out of events like this?

A couple things. I'm on a mission to kind of expose what onsides is up to. Because it's interesting with all the keynotes that I've heard from last week and this week, there is a common theme of the fragmentation. And the fragmentation is happening at all levels and it affects all spokes of the ecosystem system. And even just you know, when we were talking about, I think there was the craft analytics speaker was talking about, she herself uses four apps. I don't know if you caught that, but she mentioned it and I was like, okay, hey, that sounds familiar. Yeah, I know I was about to make a, you know, a fool out of myself. Say, hey, don't worry, I got it. But it's interesting to hear it in different lenses, from different lenses of the fragmentation in this space. And so coming to these events, it's been helpful for me to see it at all levels, you know, try to figure out where can we push a little bit to get the awareness out and what sort of product market fit we can find in this industry.

Dave, thanks for coming back. Two time.

Yes.

First two time buying sandlot guest and I'm sure we'll have you back at some point in the future.

Awesome. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thank you.