Branding, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Start-ups, Marketing, Tennis, Mobile Apps, Gamification, Community, SportsTech
Stephen Mikolajczak
Tenni: Modernizing the Tennis Experience.

In 2018, a Copenhagen City Heart Study was published via the Mayo Clinic which found that playing tennis added 9.7 years to people’s lives. The contributing factors were not just benefits gained from physical activity, but also from the social relationships formed by being part of a tennis community.

Given all this, I was super intrigued to speak with founder Mark Pesahovich in our latest release of ‘start-up stories’ to hear how he’s looking to re-invent recreational tennis with a community-based platform named Tenni. We hope you enjoy the highlights from our conversation.

Tenni: Modernizing the Tennis Experience.
Branding, Entrepreneurship, Start-ups, Marketing, SportsTech, Founders, Mental Health, Student-Athletes
Stephen Mikolajczak
The Zone: Disrupting the stigma of mental Health

It’s no secret that mental health has become a topic evermore top-of-mind in the cultural conversation. Over the last 10 years we’ve seen a nationwide increase in mental health-related challenges by 250% for a subset of one group in particular, the student-athlete. We sat down recently for a truly inspiring conversation with Erik Poldroo, Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer of The Zone, a personalized mental wellness platform for student-athletes and their athletic programs. We spoke about their origins, purpose, fears, frustrations, and pivots. The Zone is gaining momentum in the market as they bring their solution now to a collection of marquee university athletic programs inside America. Based on our conversation, it’s easy to see the positive impact they have already started to make.

The Zone: Disrupting the stigma of mental Health
Branding, Entrepreneurship, Start-ups, Marketing, Golf, Betting, SportsTech, Founders
Stephen Mikolajczak
LoopGolf: Disrupting Real Money Betting

An estimated 85% of golfers play for money, it's a natural motion that's always been embedded in the game where even Mary, Queen of Scot's played a money match before her wedding day! Recently we enjoyed a fascinating conversation with co-founder of LoopGolf, Thomas Reinholm. Loop is a peer-to-peer betting app built specifically for golf. Thomas and I spoke about Loop’s origins, where the game of golf is heading, the Loop brand, and what its future could look like.

LoopGolf: Disrupting Real Money Betting
Branding, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Start-ups, Marketing, Tennis, Footwear
Stephen Mikolajczak
Frank Works: Reinventing Tennis Footwear

For our latest edition of ‘start-up stories’ we connected with to Rod Foley, Dave Lambert, and Greg Newman, founders of 5AM Brands, to hear about their story and how they’re looking to disrupt the tennis footwear category with a new challenger brand Frank Works. Here’s a look our conversation:

Frank Works: Reinventing Tennis Footwear
Branding, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Start-ups, Marketing, Fan Engagement, SportsTech
Stephen Mikolajczak
SuperQuickQuestion: helping Fans & Athletes ...

For our latest edition of ‘start-up stories’ I had a blast talking to Dave Benson, founder of SuperQuickQuestion about their story, brand, and some major lessons from their journey thus far. Here’s a look our conversation:

SuperQuickQuestion: helping Fans & Athletes meet 1-on-1

Brand Strategy

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How Nike could use blockchain to deliver on its brand promise.

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Equality. This is not about any one issue surrounding race, culture, religion, sexual orientation, or political view this is a statement about humanity. This represents a brand that is courageous in what they stand for and wants to be part of the conversation in society. In my opinion, the net result is pure. marketing. brilliance.

But how could they make this promise stronger? Moving beyond just words into the act of “story doing” to further strengthen its brand equity? The answer...blockchain. I’ve been fortunate to be exposed to this technology first hand and enamored by the transparency and trust this technology can facilitate.

 *** Legal Disclaimer: While I am an IBM employee and work on the IBM Blockchain brand, all opinions below are my own. ***

 For those looking to catch up on what exactly is blockchain (which is still most of the population), it’s the technology that underpins the cryptocurrency bitcoin, however, its capabilities are so much more than that. At its core, blockchain is a digital ledger that can trace and track every transaction from beginning to end, and it’s also immutable, meaning you cannot alter the information once entered. Using a “permission-based blockchain” (i.e. you decide who sees what info) the use cases are pretty vast, helping solve problems not only in the financial industry, but across other industries like food, entertainment, media, government, and supply chain.

 Now let’s get back to Nike. It’s been well documented that Nike factories where shoes are manufactured, don’t always use the most ethical business practices. This behavior seems a few steps removed from its brand promise of “Equality” doesn’t it? By no means am I bashing Nike…I’m a big fan…but I would like to challenge them to become even better.

 So what’s the connection between Nike and blockchain? If Nike was able to put all of their manufacturing and supply chain processes on a blockchain, they could make the data surrounding who is building their shoes and how it is being sourced transparent to the marketplace. What’s more, they could become drivers of the entire industry-wide footwear and apparel consortium – with other members of their supply chain like, raw-material suppliers, manufacturing facilities, retailers, and even their competitors - plugging their transactional data onto a blockchain creating one single source of truth.

 If you’re starting to squirm a bit and get nervous about the notion of working with your competition and opening up the blinds of your business practices to your consumers, think of the alternative...what if it’s not Nike who adopts this effort first? They could easily be disrupted and another brand, challenger or start-up, could immediately replace their street cred when it comes to the ideals and promise of standing for “Equality”. Which to me is what I'd be most concerned about.