Being an entrepreneur is one of the toughest professions in the world, and that is simply because you are the one who has to make everything happen. Your ideas, your funding, your research, your cold calls and your ambition are what is going to make or break your innovation. But Sport eXperience is wanting to help sports startups navigate the treacherous entrepreneurial waters.
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Founded in the Netherlands at the SX Eindhoven, by Arno Hermans, Sport eXperience is a Sports Accelerator, the first and only one in its country of origin. The company’s main goal is to help entrepreneurs and inventors in the sports industry develop their ideas and businesses into something real and tangible that can be successful in improving society through its desired function.
In a recent interview with SportTechie, Hermans gave a passionate answer about why he wanted to create this startup:
“My love for sports comes down to soccer and volleyball. As captain of the regional volleyball team, we became the Dutch champion in 1996. As an engineer, I’ve gotten the opportunity to discover different technologies in different sectors, and be involved in multiple sectors as well as set up a Sports Engineering department. During the years, I grew up with the energy of Startups. When you make that combination; sports, technology and Startups, there’s an accelerator born. By interviewing 100 stakeholders in 2015, I got the confirmation that The Netherlands was ready for a Sports Accelerator.”
Over a few months, an innovation put through the Sport eXperience Accelerator program goes through the full development structure of a business creation. The Accelerator’s staff and teams of investors, coaches, business people and innovators work with the entrepreneurs side-by-side through the process of crafting a vision, deciding on stakeholders, registering for patents, flushing out a value proposition and a business model canvas, developing a strategy and deciding on a financial investment plan. All of this work and preparation boils down to an event where the entrepreneur will present his or her innovation to potential investors in order to go through their first series of funding for their invention and business.
These sessions are only part of the experience that this Accelerator offers. The combination and wealth of knowledge, skills and experience that are brought together from all the different start-up companies and innovators creates an incredible network of communication. This knowledge-sharing process assists in stimulating the companies involved in the program, and helps them see new ideas and action steps they can take to better their own inventions through the eyes and suggestions of others.
“Our focus is on technological and social sports innovations. Every edition, we bring together great innovations from great people. We try to avoid competition, as we stimulate open innovation. All Startups help each other together with the coaches and experts,” commented Hermans. There are many people who simply travel to the events put on by the program, or follow it on social media in order to gain knowledge, expertise and grow their network. Additionally, societal programs such as educational institutions, governments and even the general public benefit from this program because it provides inspiration for the young inventors of the world, helps provide research on sports innovation and its success and develops community involvement.
One of the many reasons a sports accelerator can be successful is it provides structure to innovators who are running around with an idea in their heads, but no guidance on how to make it flourish. “Startups cry for structure. We offer a methodology of innovation in order to really speed up the innovation process under the guidance of innovation coaches,” Hermans stated.
Through their “Pressure Cooker Sessions,” the startup founders work with their coaches to develop their business plans and their ideas into truly practical solutions and creations. The coaches come from a wide variety of areas related to sports, innovation and business. Besides the coaches, the program brings in specialists to help with different subsets of innovations, in order to create a more specialized approach to the client’s idea. The program does this because “Startups like to learn from sports related companies. Every session we offer two lectures on the theme in our methodology, which inspires the Startups,” Hermans added.
Finally, Sport eXperience assists in the funding process as well. Through their contacts with banks, crowdfunding platforms, investors and venture capitalists, the program builds a large network of people who are willing to invest in these innovations in order to drive them to their greatest potential.
As part of the Brainport community, Sport eXperience will run its program four times a year and asks for a fee in order to participate. The reason it does this is because no startups are ever in the same phase, so each one may need a different starting block to get the most from the program.
Sport eXperience is not the first Accelerator we have covered. Stadia Ventures and the Dodgers Accelerator are leading the way in the States but it’s been great to see more accelerators pop up around the world in the last year or so (check out Le Tremplin out of Paris as well). These types of programs are becoming great tools for startups and big businesses in the industry to develop innovations that solve problems in sports today.