Lucas Espada, a third-year Northeastern University student, wanted to help potential soccer recruits catch the eyes of busy coaches across college campuses. With the idea in mind, the entrepreneur turned to a method for which he already had a proof of concept: a software platform that would showcase videos of high school athletes to help get them in front of recruiters—from a distance.
Espada and 12 of his fellow undergraduates have developed an app called ShowNxt. It's a social media platform that allows users to upload 15-second highlight videos of themselves that best illustrate their soccer skills.
ShowNxt's interface is a feed, similar to Instagram or Facebook. But unlike the popular social media platforms, the ShowNxt app is limited to soccer content only. It's meant to highlight the moments that tend to get lost in the feed.
“We like to say we're social media for kids who want to play soccer in college,” Espada said. “We say that [your] video has the potential to do more for you.”
Espada developed the concept behind ShowNxt while he was a high school student in New Jersey. There, he was recruited to create videos for classmates who had the means to pay for a videographer and editor.
“It really started to sink in and really started to make me question, you know, what is the scope of college recruiting?” Espada said.
In college, Espada decided to take his idea to the next level. He entered Northeastern’s student-led venture accelerator, IDEA, and was a Husky Startup Challenge finalist. Since then, his company has received thousands of dollars in gap funding as well as Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Service credits.
With that momentum, Espada recruited three more students for the business side of his venture and nine others for the development side.
Zachary Jarnagin, a former Division 1 track and field recruit, serves as ShowNxt's chief technology officer. He said the beta form of the app, which launched in April, has been downloaded 400 times; the full app will be made available in early 2021. Twenty-three college coaches have signed on since the beta version came online.
Jarnagin, who is also a third-year Northeastern student, is familiar with the college athlete recruiting process. He thinks the app could be especially advantageous now, when athletes can’t meet with coaches in person due to the pandemic.
From Jarnagin's perspective, a short sports reel could go a long way compared to the traditional route of reaching out to head coaches.
“Just meeting with [the head coach], [getting] into his schedule, was ridiculous,” the computer science major said, recalling his own recruitment experience. “So these 15-second videos are a great way for athletes to be like, 'This is what I can contribute,' and coaches in that short amount of time can determine, 'I want to reach out to you' or 'I don't want to.'”
The 15-second time limit was strategic when developing the app, Espada said. His relationship with a college coach provided insight on what recruiters are looking for and how soccer stars can stand out in a sea of hungry high school athletes.
Plus, college coaches aren't necessarily looking for high-quality videos. In quarantine, home training videos and workouts have become popular among ShowNxt’s 700 users.
“We’ve actually seen that the videos that garner the most user attention are the completely raw ones with no editing," Espada said. "They score a goal, the crowd goes crazy, the phone is shaking—people love that.”
The hope is that a growing number of collegiate soccer coaches will love it, too. Already, coaches from Northeastern, MIT, Boston University, Boston College and the University of Michigan are using ShowNxt.
Although the platform won’t be available in app stores until January, ShowNxt's goal is to reach 10,000 beta users by then. The plan is to include other sports in the mix as well, including basketball and lacrosse over the next two years and potentially football a year later.
The ShowNxt team is exploring a subscription model at $4.99 a month in concert with the rollout. Subscribers will get access to enhanced features.
In the meantime, while high school athletes and recruiters can’t meet in person, Espada hopes his “Uber-for-athletes videography” concept will take off.
“In a time where everybody's looking for virtual solutions, we present exactly that,” Espada said. “There's never been a better time for what we're building than right now.”
