Introducing the Starting Lineup for the 2024 Techstars Sports Accelerator Powered By Indy
Sep 10, 2024
By Jordan Fliegel, Managing Director
We are thrilled to be going into year six of our Techstars Sports Accelerator Powered By Indy as we continue to search the globe for not only the best founders -- with tremendous determination, large visions, demonstrated in-depth knowledge of their particular markets, and the humor and humility to rally a team around them -- but also teams working on some of the most timely and exciting subcategories within the sports ecosystem.
This year’s class comes to us from six different countries including the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Israel & Norway. The class consists of a even balance of B2B (5) & B2C (5) companies covering categories including ticketing (Fanbase & VOW), fan engagement (Grandstand & SQQ), athlete wellness (Geysersteam & Wellnify), player performance (BodyPro & Tzuka) & recreational sports (RunAgain & FishBuddy).
The founders from these 10 startups will join us on Sept 10th for our 13-week mentorship-driven accelerator program, culminating, as always, with our Demo Day/One Zero Sports Summit from December 12-14th in Indy, where they will showcase their progress in front of hundreds of strategic operators and investors in the sports tech space from around the world. Over the course of the 13 weeks we’ll work to help the founders better understand their customers, refine their go-to-market strategy, remove key obstacles in their path while accelerating their rate of progress, building muscle memory through KPI development and aggressive goal-setting with weekly progress accountability, introducing new partners and potential key hires, and preparing them for Demo Day and their likely Seed/Series A fundraisings to come in 1H 2025.
In doing so, we will have plenty of help! Our vast network at the Techstars Sports Accelerator Powered by Indy includes nearly 250 mentors from the sports industry including venture-backed founders, celebrity athletes, angel investors, VCs, VP & C-level executives from professional teams, leagues and publicly traded companies, and domain experts in categories ranging from product development, to sales, finance, digital marketing, and more. Not to mention our incredible partners, without whom none of this would be possible, and through whom our founders gain an incredible strategic advantage: Founding Partners including the Next Level Fund/50 South Capital, Pacers Sports & Entertainment, Indianapolis Colts, and Indiana Sports Corp, and Supporting Partners NCAA, NTT IndyCar Series/Indianapolis Motor Speedway & Adidas.
Please meet the Techstars Sports Accelerator Powered By Indy Class of 2024:
SuperQuickQuestion (SQQ) is a patented live meet-and-greet platform for athletes, teams and celebrities to connect with fans. It's fast, easy and fun and solves the problem of fan engagement for teams while allowing them to collect first-party data. Think of a live version of Cameo...but faster and for VIPs. We sell SaaS licenses directly to teams, leagues and brands. We are currently working with teams like Monumental Sports, Houston Astros, UEFA Champions league and more.
Geysersteam (Indianapolis, IN)
GeyserSteam is the only premium plug and play steam room. Installation requires no plumbing or permits, it can heat to 120 degrees with 100% humidity and works both outdoors and indoors. Compared to the traditional permanent steam room, GeyserSteam is plug-and-play so it doesn't require city permits, plumbing, or electrical installation. It is also much cheaper ($8k vs. $20k+) and is more convenient to install.
VOW is an all-in-one platform that unifies event and people management across live experiences and events, closing the gaps in a highly fragmented and archaic landscape, streamlining and elevating the event experience for all stakeholders, eliminating massive losses in time and money, as well as unnecessary stress. We currently have 55 enterprise customers,150 event organizers, 3k groups and 20k guests, all with VOW accounts.
Wellnify (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada)
Wellnify.ai is a unique platform which helps organizations engage their community members in health and wellness-based activities by relying on a framework of gamification and the science of behavior change. The Wellnify.ai platform is highly customizable and leverages artificial intelligence and augmented reality to make wellness fun.
Fanbase is a fan operating system built to connect people through sports. Sports Organizations outside the very top tier of sport (NFL, NBA, MLB) have small back office teams with large revenue profiles. They are spinning a lot of plates, covering multiple roles and often dealing with legacy tools outside of the media space. Fanbase is stripping hours of time per week from these people's plates as well as increasing revenue by an average of 15%. We have 200k fan profiles with a MAU of around 100k users. We also have over 100 partner sports organizations which grows every week.
BodyPro has developed an AI-driven athletic performance platform that automatically crafts personalized sports-specific, physical, and mental training programs tailored for each team and athlete with diverse schedules and unique needs while streamlining coaches' workflows to reduce workload and make the highest level of training accessible to everyone. BodyPro's mission is to bridge the physical and mental training disparity in sports teams by seamlessly scaling the coaching staff's reach. To date, we’ve signed 50+ clubs serving over 6.5k athletes.
Tzuka are building the ultimate workout earbuds. Our earbuds are over 4x tougher than other sports earbuds, totally waterproof up to 2m depth, shock & dustproof and Bluetooth compatible. Built to be as tough as whatever your workout. However, the coolest feature is our FreedomMode which enables you to upload your favorite songs and podcasts onto your earbuds for phone-free listening - controlled totally by your earbuds. After 4 years of R&D we have 3 patents pending protecting our novel assembly method and we are preparing to launch in Q4 of 2024.
Fishbuddy is revolutionizing the recreational fishing industry by using AI, AR, GPS, satellite and weather data in a way that’s never been done before, allowing the app to record the species, length, weight, condition and location of the fish. Fishbuddy is live in four countries but downloaded in more than 150 countries all over the world with more than 600k active users. With Fishbuddy, we can provide valid, big data on life below water wherever the app is being used. This big data is of great value, and potentially a game changer for sustainable governance of life below water – taking us from pure B2C to B2B.
RunAgain provides ONE integrated platform which serves the needs of both runners and organizers by enabling organizers to promote & sell bookings to their events, and runners to easily find & book quality events. Join our community of 20k+ runners and 600k+ race organizers. We have 50k monthly visitors and 20k registered freemium users with 150 paying premium users and 60 paying race organizers, across 14 countries and 4 continents.
Grandstand is building an AI powered sports reporter for every athlete. For athletes, Grandstand’s AI sports reporter tracks your games, gathers relevant media, and asks intelligent questions that help your fans get a behind the scenes view on your performance.