Verne: Sports brands crave high school athletes over pro influencers
Brian Verne · $700k Raised For App That Connects Brands to High School Athletes With Brian Verne of Phantom EP 210 · Mar 30, 2016 · at 3:45
Brian Verne, CEO and co-founder of Phenom, explains the shift in sports marketing toward youth athletes and the commercial thesis behind his platform.
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“The brands and the marketers and the retailers are no longer just placing a, you know, value on pro athletes as being influencers. In fact, they absolutely crave the high school athlete segment, but the problem that they have is reaching young athletes at a grassroots level to get product feedback and doing it in a really, really timely fashion.”
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Phenom has about 60,000 high school athlete users
“So we have about 60,000 high school athletes that are using the platform.”
Phenom peaked at over 25,000 monthly active users in early 2016
“Our general, you know, monthly actives are anywhere from, you know, in the tens of thousands all the way up to, we had, you know, over 25,000 monthly actives you know, in the last in the last quarter at one point.”
Phenom users have tagged over 250,000 products to their profiles
“Our users have added over 250,000 products to their phenom profiles”
Verne: Phenom has raised over $700k including 500 Startups
“So overall, we've raised a little over 700,000 between some notes and some equity, and then, you know, now we're in 500 startups you know, batch 16 here in San Francisco, and so that, you know, that comes with you know, a small investment as well.”
Brian Verne takes a $30k founder salary and often foregoes pay
“About 30,000 bucks a year, and there are many times where we haven't paid ourselves.”
Knowing startup difficulties early would have caused Brian Verne to quit
“I don't necessarily wish I knew this, because I think we probably would have quit, even during our first startup, but just how difficult, you know, it really is to, you know, build a business, and, you know, to grow it, and to see it scale, and, you know, to d…”