All of the Big Kansas City content wouldn’t be possible without Pinsight Media+. They’re a pioneer in mobile media with deep entrepreneurial roots. Their team brings leadership, experience and global awareness to Kansas City’s booming startup community. To learn more or talk with our friends at Pinsight, email Serge Bushman, sbushman@pinsightmedia.com.
Day one of Big Kansas City kicked off with a question for the audience: Are you building a great company or building a great product?
John Wirtz, co-founder and chief product officer at Hudl, explained how his team utilized product strategies over the past few years for growth and success of the company.
Thanks to our sponsor
The idea for Hudl came from a simple observation. Wirtz and a University of Nebraska classmate noticed that their athletic department had archaic methods for preparing football games: coaches burned hundreds of DVDs to hand out to players, printed out full-color reports for review and placed post-it notes on athlete lockers as the main channel of communication, just to name a few.
“We thought, ‘there has to be a better way,’” Wirtz said.
So in January 2006, Wirtz sat down with the Nebraska head football coach and his staff for a meeting. He presented a prototype of what would become Hudl, and the group loved it, so much so that they wanted to use it that spring for game prep. Nebraska became Hudl’s first paying customer, and the company kicked into gear around sports software and shared video services.
The company garnered about $70,000 in cash through business competitions, which got them started. “Basically, our seed round was a stack of novelty checks,” Wirtz laughed. “We had interns, we certainly weren’t paying ourselves, we worked in an office with no air conditioning… you get the picture.”
Things went well with Nebraska, and soon the New York Jets came calling.
“We doubled our customers, and we started to get a lot of press with the Jets,” Wirtz said. “But behind the scenes, we were quickly running out of money and worrying about being an epic failure.”
At the same time, the company kept fielding calls from coaches and parents at the high school level looking to use Hudl’s product and bring videos, playbooks and reports to players using newer technology.
“We kept telling them, ‘Hudl is too expensive for what you need and want,’” Wirtz said. “Not to mention we were completely focused on working with the NFL and Division I schools. Then after the two-hundredth request, I thought, ‘Hey, maybe we’re being giant idiots. Maybe this is the market we should actually be looking at.’”
So in 2008, Hudl pivoted, bringing its price point down to $800/year instead of tens of thousands of dollars and adjusting its software to be usable within an Internet browser instead of a server.
Positive feedback came quickly. 12 high schools and one smaller college signed up within the year, and Hudl raised more money through its investment team based on the new direction. By 2009, the number of high schools using Hudl jumped to 350, with 50 of them based in the KCMO region, and eventually Hudl expanded to include youth and club sports as well.
Today, Hudl has 200 employees to support 50,000 teams and 3 million athletes and coaches across 100 countries. More than 1 billion videos have been uploaded, and videos span 50 sports. Additionally, Hudl found an opportunity to democratize the recruiting process for athletes by offering video highlight and marketing tools.
“We’re really proud of this feature because it helps give exposure to athletes wanting to move to the next level, no matter where they’re located in the country,” Wirtz said.
Wirtz concluded his opening speech at Big Kansas City with 5 tips aimed at product people to help build companies:
MVP your board: “Your board is your most valuable asset, so don’t squander it” Wirtz said. “Think of it as a process instead of just going through the motions. At Hudl, we rehearse our board meetings to make sure we’re ready to go ahead of time, and we keep meetings PowerPoint and handout free so that we can focus on discussing problems and issues. There’s no way we could have successfully changed direction back in 2008 without our board.”
Engineer your team: “Ask questions like, how is each role strategic for the company? Do we have an onboarding system for employees like we do for products? How do we interface with customers or connect with the product team? How does each role grow the company and evolve?”
Know that your mission and values matter—and should evolve: “Ignoring your company mission is the equivalent of remodeling your bathroom even though your house has a poor foundation. It’s a waste of time.”
Iterate on your company just as you iterate on your product: “At Hudl, everyone sells and supports.”
Measure: “If you don’t measure your crazy experiments, then your work can become pointless. Put dashboards everywhere. Create company retreats where you can talk about what’s working and what’s not. Send out a lot of customer surveys—I know it seems lame, but surveys are really useful.”
Wirtz also mentioned that he wishes more people realized how much funding is available in the Midwest.
“I hear from people all the time, ‘I really want to start my company here in the Midwest but there’s no money,’ and that’s just not true. Almost all of Hudl’s funding came from the Midwest. You can raise funds here or you can raise them in Silicon Valley, but either way, focus on finding investors who are fired up about the work you’re doing,” Wirtz said.
Credits: Photo by Corey Mohn.
