It’s a scene many people are familiar with: Coaches armed with clipboards stand nearby while players try to focus on making the pass, shot, or catch that will put them on the top of the list for the team of their choice.
For the coaches, the hardest work comes after tryouts finish. It used to mean staying up late or working over weekends, poring over notes and inputting data into spreadsheets to create rankings that would help them fill their rosters with the right players. But a Twin Cities startup called TeamGenius provides a way to make that process simpler, faster and more transparent with evaluation software that works on a smartphone or tablet.
TeamGenius co-founder and CEO Chris Knutson said the company has had good traction since it launched in the middle of 2016. It works with more than 300 sports clubs or associations, representing roughly 130,000 players. A recent addition, Elite Clubs National League, is the largest women's competitive soccer league in the world. Several Minnesota entities have signed on, including Minnesota Hockey Camps.
After successfully raising $700,000 during a seed round last year, the company is looking to start another round of fundraising in the next month. The new infusion of capital would be put toward scaling up TeamGenius marketing and sales and building out new, more sophisticated features.
TeamGenius was a high tech division finalist in the Minnesota Cup in 2017. Minne Inno included TeamGenius on its list of “on fire” startups contributing momentum to the Twin Cities ecosystem.
Many of the company’s clients, representing teams across 12 sports, gave TeamGenius a shot during tryouts. Knutson said the product really shines then because it saves coaches and volunteers hours of work transferring handwritten notes into digital formats and trying to make fair decisions based on their records. It also cuts down on mistakes and builds confidence among parents and players, who want to know how coaches make their decisions.
After proving a tryout time-saver, coaches want to tap into the software’s long-term tracking capability to provide better player feedback throughout the season and over years. Through clients, Knutson hears that parents love that. Previously, coaches that wanted to track player performance and evaluate their progress didn’t have an efficient way to do it. “So instead they just [didn’t] do anything,” Knutson said.
The company evolved along a similar path, from primarily a player evaluation tool to one that includes player development. Sports clubs, associations, or leagues can pay a subscription fee of $4 per player to use the software.
Now, Knutson said, the company is looking at ways to meet needs for better analytics and benchmarks. Reaching that next level, which involves standardizing data from players in the system so far, would help national governing bodies get a sense of how well different regions of the country develop their players in a given sport.
