When Charlie Volker's initial dreams of heading to the NFL were dashed during the Covid-19 pandemic, he began searching for different paths. He stumbled upon Team USA's bobsled team, and easily enough uploaded videos of his athletic highlights to the group through a site called GMTM.
Earlier this year, Volker competed in bobsledding at the Beijing Olympics with Team USA.
GMTM (pronounced "game time"), is a Tampa-based tech company that works like a cross between a social media feed and portfolio for athletes to connect with coaches, organizations and schools.
"There's so much fragmentation and antiquation in sports today," co-founder and CRO Connor Dietz said. "It's fragmented from content to data and information, to how it's structured and processed both for an athlete, but also organizations to connect with athletes. We brought it to one place and made it very easy to discover and connect with athletes, both within their sports and new sports."
The company, similar to social media networks, allows users to log on and upload their own content to their feed. It serves as a profile of record for the athletes, some of which are as young as 10 years old on the site. They can then be recruited by coaches, universities and colleges, or organizations like Team USA.
"We started GMTM to connect athletes to opportunities and do that through technology," Dietz said. "And, the one thing that’s pretty neat, is that has never changed."
On the flip side, recruiting and college visits become much easier for those seeking talented athletes.
"Athletes can submit their content and try out from anywhere, place, and time, to get in front of coaches for an authentic evaluation," Dietz said, adding it's a way to more easily recruit versus traveling across the globe. "You're able to recruit where you otherwise never would have been able to, and don't have to spend thousands on plane tickets."
The site is free for athletes and comes with a fee for any organization similar to other SaaS companies. The company launched in the summer of 2019, and shortly after participated in San Francisco-based Launch Fund's accelerator program. Then, the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic hit, accelerating a need for the business beyond what the three co-founders envisioned.
"It really did accelerate the rate at which organizations and athletes adapted technology," Dietz said. "And it really leveraged content becoming the future of athletes, of sports and a way they tell their stories."
It has roughly 15 employees, with Dietz and CEO Joey Grant based in Tampa. GMTM has now raised $3.5 million and will soon begin raising for a Series A at an undisclosed amount.
But the main focus, Dietz said, is now that the site is fully launched and garnering success stories, the company's next step is to focus on spreading the word.
"We’ve built the platform, built the social network, have athletes finding opportunities every day and now it's going deep and wide," he said. "We're putting the pedal to the metal in terms of getting the word out and want to keep it going until we’re truly the profile of record and social network for all athletes across the globe."
