A social media startup for athletes called Trophecase has released the next version of its platform and has secured a confidential lead investor. The size of the investment has not been disclosed.
Trophecase already has thousands of users since it was launched early last week, and the plan is to have many more in the next year. With big plans ahead, the Schenectady startup is seeking additional investment.
"Our goal is to really grow here in a local and regional basis. Our goal is to get to a million users in less than 12 months, which we think is very achievable,” said Hunter Moffat, Trophecase founder.
The company is in the process of marketing the platform to more than 100,000 potential athletes. There are 2 billion athletes ages 6 to 55 around the world, he said.
Moffat said there will be announcements of college and professional athletes joining the platform soon. The startup is working to develop partnerships with various organizations locally, including several colleges.
Trophecase is essentially LinkedIn for athletes of all ages. Users can create individual profiles that contain stats and multimedia as a resource for recruiters and — now that student athletes can profit off their own brands — potential sponsors. Each individual athlete’s webpage has a photo and stats in the style of a baseball card. On the other side of the digital card are other stats and various social media and links.
"The main focus is providing value to the individual athlete to easily grow their brand and centralize their stats and highlights in one spot and be able to share it with their friends and audience in a cool way,” Moffat said.
The startup is also building its team. That includes the hiring of Matt Bemis as chief technology officer. Bemis holds the same position for telehealth startup Kaden Health, which was based in Cohoes before moving downstate and raising millions of dollars. The previous Trophecase CTO, Michael McCutcheon, has transitioned to the role of adviser.
Trophecase plans to make revenue through a premium subscription model of the site planned for later this month, Moffat said. It also gets a portion of any sponsorships secured through the platform. And users can also buy physical copies of their digitals cards that they can hand out to their network.
The new investor comes roughly a year later than Moffat was originally expecting. He had been speaking with an investor who he was expecting to commit in March 2020, but the investment was put on hold when the pandemic hit.
Moffat has spent the last year making improvements on the beta version of the app in preparation for the re-launch.
