New technology from startup ventures is transforming the global sports industry. This Startup Series has introduced over 300 startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience by allowing Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story and pitch their idea. Feel free to submit your startup’s answers to the below questions or contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for inclusion in this series.
Company name: Matchlete
Founder(s): Jeremy Jones, Matt Roark
Headquarters: Atlanta
Website: https://www.matchlete.com/
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Matchlete is the mobile app search engine that helps student-athletes find the best college program to fit their academic, athletic and career goals.2. Problem & Solution
With over 10-plus years of experience in high school and college athletics, we have noticed that the vast majority of student-athletes are choosing colleges with the primary focus being the athletic fit. Noticing this issue, we wanted to test our theory by conducting a focus group survey with 35-plus former collegiate athletes. Over 44 percent of all participants stated that they did not pick the best school that fit their overall profile and 1 out of 2 surveyed expressed trust issues with the coaching staff during the process.The solution we created is called Matchlete. The iOS and Android app is a search engine that allows the student-athlete to search and match with college programs based off different criteria such as how far from home they would like to go, what size school they want to attend, what majors are offered, what type of playing style is utilized, anticipated playing time and more. Once the information is inputted and the user hits the “search” button, the app computes an algorithm that suggests the best fit for the student-athlete. List schools will range from NAIA, JUCO, to NCAA DI, DII & DIII. The user will then be able to list their favorite schools, communicate with college coaches by direct message and share game film (during sanctioned NCAA recruiting periods only).
There will also be a “player review” section on all schools that allows current and former athletes to give unbiased raw feedback about the athletic program. This will help give a different perspective to the student-athlete before making their decision on where to attend college.
On the back end, coaches can perform searches on high school athletes as well. Say a coach is looking for a 6’5” quarterback that lives in a two-hour radius from campus, runs a 4.6 40-yard dash and is interested in becoming an accounting major. The same filters the recruits use to find a school, the coaches will have access to. This is ideal for college coaches to tailor their recruiting pitch to individual athletes based off what the recruit ranked as most important. For example, location, academics, playing time, playing style, etc.
Matchlete will pilot test in the state of Georgia with football initially and then expand to other states and other sports such as baseball, boys and girls basketball, soccer and track and field.