Hey friends,
Back again with another edition of The Founder Newsletter - this is Episode 28. If you’re new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this week’s episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less.
No idea what The Founder is? Read this.
Mission control:
Learn -> Founder favorite resources
Free money -> Discount codes
And who am I?
I’m Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself.
Let’s get it.
This Week’s Episode (Ep 28) 🏀
Guest -> Brian Verne, Co-Founder & CEO of Wave.TV
Mission -> Wave TV is on a mission to entertain the modern day sports fan with programming they love, produced for the digital platforms where they spend the most time
Episode available on -> Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
In this episode we talk with Brian about…
🔮 The future of the sports media landscape
🏟️ The next generation of sports fandom
📱 Digital and social content production
🔒 Sports intellectual property and league partnerships
🔨 How to build a modern day media company
Summary 🔍
What is Wave.TV and how did Brian get started?
Brian grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and has been in and around sports his entire life.
After playing baseball throughout college and looking for another opportunity to compete in the professional world, he discovered startups and has be working on various businesses over the past decade, all at the center of sports and media.
As he consistently heard the traditional sports media companies talk about decreasing fandom for younger generations, he knew there was an opportunity.
What he knew, that they missed, was that fandom has never been stronger - it just shifted to the rapidly emerging social and digital platforms.
This was the key insight that inspired Wave.TV.
Today at Wave.TV, Brian and his team are building a next generation sports media company.
They produce content across 20 brands, including Break Ankles Daily, for basketball lovers, Dingers, for baseball fanatics and Oddballs, for all the sports you didn’t know you needed.
Their content is specifically created for those digital and social platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube because that’s where the next generation of fans are consuming content.
Over the last 3 years they’ve gone sport by sport, and fandom by fandom to build their impressive portfolio.
It’s a fairly simple playbook, but one that they have executed masterfully as they've seen parabolic growth in 2020.
Here’s why I’m a fan and excited about the future for Wave.TV:
Brian and his team are skating to where the puck is going. Traditional media consumption numbers (TV, radio) are way down. People like to consume content on their phone and are spending less time in front of a TV or radio. Brian and his team are taking sports content and repurposing it specifically for the platforms where people spend most of their time
The league partnerships and IP deals are incredibly valuable and exciting. Traditionally, sports leagues have been extremely protective of their IP. It makes sense that they would want to be the only ones that could use that IP so they could profit off of their games. Where leagues miscalculated was that as consumers shifted their media preferences to mobile apps instead of traditional TV, the leagues and their old school content partners didn’t know how to adapt their content. Most leagues are now open to partnering with a media company that specializes in repurposing their content in a mobile-first format. That’s Wave.TV. If it plays out how I assume it will, Wave.TV will either be a billion dollar company or have lots of competitors trying to do the same thing
Wave.TV is giving a voice to the “little guy” in sports. There are lots of smaller sports across the world that have incredibly deep, niche fandoms. These sports (e.g., competitive eating, strongman, crossfit games, etc.) didn’t have a seat at the table in the traditional media landscape because there simply weren’t enough ad dollars to make it worth their while. Because of the highly leveraged digital model that Brian and team have created, they are able to build shows and dedicated programming to feature these sports. This will make them more sticky overtime as they serve all fandoms
Brian’s Startup Manifesto 📜
What’s a Startup Manifesto?
At the end of every episode, I ask all of my founder guests the same question:
If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?
Here’s what Brian had to say:
Put a high priority on being nice to people. That is super important as you move throughout your life.
Things are going to take a lot longer than you probably expected. Be prepared for that.
Truly value every single relationship with the utmost importance because you never know when that individual is going to come back into your life.
Deliver on what you say you’re going to do. If you deliver on your word and you’re reliable and trustworthy, more often than not, you’re going to end up doing well in business and life.
Watch Wave.TV!
What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔
After reflecting on my conversation with Brian, here’s something that really got my wheels spinning:
Building a contrarian view 🤯
I have a special place in my heart for Brian - we met while he was building a prior startup and I was working on Tallyo (my first failed venture).
We’re both from Northeast Ohio, and I will always root a little harder for him throughout his career to help shine a light on our hometown.
What I love most about the origin story for Wave.TV is how radically different it is from the rest of the industry.
Brian and Ishaan (his co-founder) had a contrarian view about the evolution of sports media.
The majority of the media and advertising world saw declining numbers year after year for traditional media channels like TV and radio and were panicked. Their data across those channels told them that there was a decreasing interest in sports for the younger generations. And it could be permanent - not good for business.
What Brian, Ishaan and a small contingent of other third party market observers noticed was that sports interest and fandom was actually at an all-time high, fans were just consuming the content in different ways.
People from 16-35 years old might not watch every regular season game, but were just as active watching clips on social, reading non-league affiliated blogs, etc. Most of this content was user generated and not from the leagues directly.
Brian and Ishaan thought that if there was a way to repurpose that valuable sports content for the mediums that were already working, they would be able to capture an increasing share of viewership.
As we know from the conversation with Brian, that is exactly what ended up playing out.
They haven’t been at it that long, only about 3 years, but have already built 20 sub-brands across Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and Youtube.
This idea of developing a contrarian view is really important when looking to start something. In the pre-internet days, information asymmetry was much more prevalent. The average person didn’t have access to the volume and/or speed of new information, so it became easy for specific people to take advantage and act on that information.
Today, because of the democratization of information on the internet, everyone has access to largely the same things. Because of that, it’s much more important to come up with a different viewpoint than the majority in order to find opportunity.
If you’re a contrarian, and wrong, you’ll look like a fool because the majority would see the answer as obvious. If you’re a contrarian and right, that’s where the real upside lives.
The ole’ you zig while they zag approach.
What’s your most provocative contrarian viewpoint?
Wrapping it Up 📕
I hope you found this interesting and inspiring! If so and you want to help support my journey to bring The Founder to millions of people across the world, here’s a couple things that would be really valuable to me and the show:
If you enjoyed this post, share it with one friend that you think is on the same wavelength. Can’t hurt and would help spread the word!
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Listen to the full podcast episode with Brian on Apple or Spotify. If you don’t have an hour to listen to the full episode, pick a couple of topics you’re interested in and skim through (topic time codes in the show notes).
If you’re feeling super giving:
Find our show on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/2VCosu6) and (1) subscribe, (2) give a 5-star rating and (3) leave a couple sentence positive review. This doesn’t seem like it would move the needle but it really is a massive help!
Till next time ✌️
Kallaway
Want more? Check out other companies we’ve featured on the show!
— 🌵 25. The Sill | Eliza Blank
— 🥦 22. Levels | Josh Clemente
— 🧑🦰 17. Kombo Ventures | Kevin Gould
— 💍 11. The Clear Cut | Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon