The NFL, Sports Tech Build Slack Teams

After a few months of personally seeing the value in the community, Potter and Troy Ruediger partnered to build a website to add many of the features that our community was in need of. “Whether it’s helping investors source sports technology startups, giving our startup founders an easy place to connect with each other, or providing NFL players a simple way to get into the sports tech industry,” according to Potter. “The website gives us the flexibility to build solutions for the challenges the sports technology community face.”

Starters’ Potter takes a balanced view of Slack, which is an integral part of the company he and Ruediger created. “Part of what makes Slack a great platform is that it is really engaging. They do a great job with notifications and emails which is key to building habits among new members.”

Life would be easier for the Starters duo, members and more if the content shared in the community was searchable for those outside the online community. “We had a great (Ask Me Anything) event a couple of weeks ago with Brian Kaiser, the CTO of Hudl. I wish the questions and answers were available so people outside the community could learn and benefit from that content.”

Expect advancement and enhancements to enterprise social software from Slack, Yammer, Facebook Workplace and more, tilted toward internal corporate use of the packages to fuel collaborations. But when it comes to sports tech the payoff is closing the gap between entrepreneurs/young startups with second career-minded athletes and investors.

Bob Wallace is a technology journalist with over 30 years of experience explaining how new services, apps, consumer electronic devices and video sources are reshaping the world of communications as we know it. Wallace has specific expertise in explaining how and why advances in technology redefine the way sports teams interact with their partners, players and fans. He’s the Founder of Fast Forward Thinking LLC.