Chris Ruder
Founder and CEO, Spikeball Inc.. On 1 show, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@spikeballchris ↗LinkedIn ↗spikeball.com ↗
Chris Ruder revived and trademarked the discontinued 1980s lawn game roundnet, launching Spikeball in 2007 as a side project before taking it full-time in 2013. He built Spikeball into a global sport and equipment brand, gaining widespread prominence after appearing on Shark Tank in 2015.
1shows
3appearances
23statements
5resolved
5supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
Everything Chris Ruder said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Chris Ruder Predicts Roundnet Will Eventually Become an Olympic Sport
“Yeah, I absolutely think we will be recognized by the Olympics. I think there will be professional round net players, and we will be considered a legitimate sport.”
Ruder: Early International Expansion Requires Existing Organic Demand
“The time where it makes the most sense to really consider it is if you have that existing demand. If you don't, then, man, it feels like a really heavy lift”
Chris Ruder Earned Spikeball Equity From Partners via Sales Targets
“So I came up with, I think it was like a three-year plan where if I hit certain sales numbers, I would earn stock from them. If I didn't hit the number, then I don't get anything, and some of the guys were cool with that. Some were not, but, you know, I spoke …”
A Free Product That Cannot Market Itself Is Not Great
“You need to give away a ton of your product for free. And if the product can't really travel on its own, it can't market itself, then you might not have that great of a product.”
Spikeball's Shark Tank Deal With Daymond John Collapsed Over Licensing
“And when we talked about sort of what direction it would be or what do we want to do, his main interest lied in licensing. So I think he said something along the lines of, you know, Chris, I've got friends at Marvel Comics. Let's maybe explore like a Spider-Ma…”
Chris Ruder: Volleyball players hated Spikeball when it first launched
“And I also thought that, you know, when I launched, I was like, yeah, volleyball players are gonna love this game, and that was just what I thought. They wound up hating it but it was these groups that I never would have thought of in a million years that love…”
Spikeball operated entirely direct-to-consumer for its first five years
“We weren't in any stores for our first five years. 100% spikeball.com.”
Chris Ruder: Vacation Requests Should Default to Yes for Strong Performers
“If you're doing your job well, and everything, and you know, you're gonna make sure things are covered while you're out, You know, the default answer should be yes.”
Chris Ruder Says Monster Faced SEC Trouble and Toxic Culture
“But the last couple years, culture went kind of toxic. Company got in some trouble with the SEC I think maybe an exec or two went to jail and it became a pretty toxic environment”
The Original Spikeball Had No Patent and an Expired Trademark
“There never was a patent on the product, so the design itself is kind of open, and the trademark, which protects the name Spikeball, has been expired, like, 10 years or something like that, so.”
Ruder: Spikeball purchased its domain name for $100
“So we got spikeball.com for a hundred dollars.”
Ruder: Spikeball raised a little over $100,000 in initial capital
“So we wound up raising, I think, a little over a 100,000 dollars. So it was roughly 10, 15,000 dollars a head.”
Ruder: Spikeball does not have a formal business plan
“To this day, you know, we don't have a formal business plan”
Spikeball Earned a Front-Page Wall Street Journal Story on Amish Players
“We wound up getting a front page story on the Wall Street Journal on that topic.”
Spikeball Reached $1 Million in Revenue Without Any Full-Time Employees
“So we had a million dollars
with zero full-time employees in 2013, and that's when my wife and I agreed it was safe to quit the day job.”
Ruder: Dick's Sporting Goods reached out unprompted to carry Spikeball in 2014
“And, yeah, it was about a year later that when Dick's Boarding Goods actually reached out to us and said, hey, we'd love to carry your product.”
Ruder: Spikeball faces over 40 competitor brands in roundnet
“We kept growing, and then another one showed up, and then another one, and I think there's, like, over 40 now, or something like that.”
Ruder: Spikeball was originally launched in 1989
“I believe Spikeball was launched in 1989, so I was 14 at the time.”
Spikeball paid $40k to $50k for its first 1,000 manufacturing run
“And if I remember right, I think it was about 40,000, maybe 50,000 dollars for those first thousand sets.”
Chris Ruder Says Five Minutes of Play Guarantees Spikeball Retention
“As long as they're willing to play for five to 10 minutes, they'll get it. But if they give up before then, our chances of keeping them are pretty low.”
Ruder: Spikeball generated $10,882 in revenue in its launch year
“We finished that year at, I believe, 10,882 dollars.”
Ruder: Early Spikeball Customers Received Non-Automated Personal Emails From the Founder
“So nearly every customer that bought at spikeball.com would get a personal email from me. It was not automated.”
Ruder: Shark Tank finale appearance drove immediate direct sales and retail inbounds
“It was the final segment of the season finale. So yeah, we had a massive party at our office, huge sales on spikeball.com that weekend and in the weeks to follow. But the real lift was we started getting tons of inbound requests from retailers, primarily like …”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Chris's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder and CEO, Spikeball Inc. | 3 | 23 | 100% 5/5 | full record on How I Built This → |