Joe Dupriest With NextUp Ventures

Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly 120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software web3, health care, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:40] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown podcast, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Joe Dupree’s out with Next Up Ventures. Welcome, Joe.

Joe Dupriest: [00:01:00] Thanks, Lee. Great to be here. Appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:02] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about next step ventures. How are you serving folks?

Joe Dupriest: [00:01:07] So we started Next Up Ventures regularly right before the pandemic. So I’ve got a sports marketing background. I was CMO at Monumental Sports and involved with that organization for almost a decade. And so we launched Next Step Ventures initially to make Angel Investments. I’ve got two co-founders that I’ve known for the better part of 15 years, other sports executives throughout the years. You know, the initial thought behind it was sort of facilitating fundraisers. We run demo days. We’ve since launched a fund. We’ve got a $5 Million Early Stage Fund, and then we also have a complementary company. Next up, Partners, which is a 1099 network of sports executives, people handling social media, PR, creative, all of that that we then use to support not just startups, but especially startups with a model that can get them the resources that they need to grow and thrive.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:54] So I would imagine that the sports tech, is it an industry now? I would imagine it’s now kind of its own industry, right? It’s a niche unto itself.

Joe Dupriest: [00:02:05] Yeah, I think so. When we say sports tech, it’s a pretty broad term. A lot of times it’s really cool tech that has a sports application but can also be applied to many other industries. But it’s interesting from the standpoint of sports teams and leagues, which traditionally have trailed the play a bit when it came to whether it was social media engagements or AR, VR, any of those type things as they would come along, you know, the bigger brands would be first. But as ownership has changed, as the executive teams running these have changed, it’s really come to the forefront of how to differentiate themselves, whether it be fan experience or digitally, you know, how they engage their fan bases. It’s really become more to the forefront.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:46] Right. And then I would layer on top of that all of these devices now where you can, you know, like the whoop device where you can kind of track yourself. It seems like the highest level athletes are using devices like that to just maximize their performance.

Joe Dupriest: [00:03:00] Exactly. I mean, it started with one of my co founders actually wants Nike plus back in the day, you know, one of the first ones of that. But then, you know, the iterations on that with Connected Fitness. And then it’s really been interesting to see the various different avenues that companies have taken. And then you get all these various products and how do you then combine them, which is in creating a whole new area of how you take all this data and use it. So more data companies come in complimentary. And so it’s really been a quickly evolving area across all sports.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:29] Yeah, it must be exciting for the athletes and for the owners to be kind of now at the forefront of this world. There are other trends you’re seeing in this because, you know, we’ve talked about a couple of things, but I would you know, you can talk about kind of Web three where there’s opportunities for a brand to insert themselves there. And with nfts and and with the licensing of athletes, it seems like, you know, those are other areas that are ripe for sports tech influence.

Joe Dupriest: [00:03:59] Yeah. And I think COVID certainly spurred a lot of it as there was no live sports. How do you engage? So virtual events really became big as the sports collectible market began to grow again. The pivot into Nfts, which obviously is only one application with like sports tech being applied to sports, but a lot of other areas that was just one that kind of came to the forefront. And then athletes being able to monetize themselves. You certainly seen a lot from the PGA Tour and and the athletes there and some of the issues and players, you know, the nil that is now come about players ability in college to monetize their own brand. But then what tools do you have to do that? What platforms and marketplaces do you have? So you’ve really seen a lot of ways for people other than just the teams and leagues and the brands to make the money. Those opportunities abound for for everybody.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:50] Are you seeing the athlete becoming more sophisticated when it comes to their investing and what they’re doing with their money?

Joe Dupriest: [00:04:57] Absolutely. I mean, you’re seeing a lot of athlete either founded companies, you know, when it’s not just pro athletes, even college athletes, you know, surrounding themselves with more business people, you know, really kind of looking at what’s what’s in the future for them, you know, planning their own money, their own. What’s next? We invested in a company called Star Stock. Kevin Durant was an investor in that. There’s a number of other companies that have popped up that have athletes being involved and really have an interest in entrepreneurship. And you’ve really seen that especially in the last couple of years, athletes saying, hey, there’s a lot more than just what the on the field is. How do I capitalize on that?

Lee Kantor: [00:05:38] So now what are kind of the investors in this space looking for in terms of their pitches that they’re seeing?

Joe Dupriest: [00:05:45] I mean, it is I see a lot of really early stage stuff, which really comes down to kind of who the founder is. And I think the authenticity of it is, is there a founder market fit is really important, which is where the athlete comes in. A lot of times if you are a fitness company and you don’t have high profile athletes that believe in what you’re doing, that that really makes it a lot more difficult. So you see a lot of advisory boards, if not founders with the athletes, then combining with the tech teams. But really, really that fit in that vision is important. And then kind of an understanding of knowing what they. Don’t know what you see. A lot of times in sports, tech or sports startups in general is sports fans or people that don’t have other sports backgrounds. They may not understand the nuances of sports. Being able to surround themselves with the right team and prove that they are the ones to solve these issues is really important to investors to see see that team and vision that’s been built while understanding that they don’t know everything.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:44] Now, we talked a little bit about this, but the athletes, now, they’re making so much money, are they kind of looking to get involved as angel investors and getting involved in the investment side of these things to diversify their portfolios? And just because they see, hey, I can leverage my brand to really kind of jump start the right with the right fit.

Joe Dupriest: [00:07:05] Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it really is. And I think it’s athletes wanting to get involved in more than just the game. And you see whether it’s launching their own brands and products, it’s not just putting their name on stuff, it’s what they believe in and things that they can really get involved in day to day and drive value. So now you have that authenticity of. I need the athlete with the company that you may not have always had before this diversification piece. You know, whether it’s Steph Curry and others you’ve seen really get involved in a lot of these spaces and behind companies that they believe in and especially, you know, founders they believe in know it’s that that’s become a big driver of it as well, especially whether it’s the social conscious, just start up solving real problems and really going after, you know, unique opportunities that the athlete sees the value in. It’s an investment piece or they want to make a lot of money off of it. And a lot of them have their own funds or investor groups, actually. You know, Baron Davis has his own group, actually, one of the companies that next ventures invested in. We met through them, through basketball, but they really want to get involved more than just writing a check. It’s not just about the money, but obviously you want to you want to make money, but they have the financial means to really find what’s important to them and drive that value.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:16] So what’s the part that excites you the most of these kind of early stage companies and founders of early stage companies? What kind of gets you fired up?

Joe Dupriest: [00:08:26] I think it’s seeing the creativity behind finding the solutions, seeing the process that that’s really exciting for me. You know, and this is a new area for me, if you like I said, I was CMO. I actually had an engineering background prior to getting involved in sports. But, you know, startup entrepreneurship is something I always had an interest in but never was hands on. So it’s a great learning experience for me as well to see what founders have succeeded, to kind of see them along their journey. They just meeting the founders, and it’s from that standpoint because that’s really what differentiates one from the next or whether they’re going to invest in early stage. You know, as great as the hockey stick grass they all put in their decks are, you know, it’s really meeting the founder and getting to know them and their vision. And sometimes, hey, maybe this this company isn’t going to be right for them. They’re going to figure something out. And I’ve seen that just in the last couple of years, you know, a number of startups that have pivoted in various ways to great success. But the founder piece of it is huge, but it’s just the creativity and the especially now paired with the openness of teams and leagues and brands to try a lot of this stuff. You know, create pilot programs and get stuff out of the market that the opportunity wasn’t necessarily there before. It was definitely a lot harder to find it now. There’s an opportunity now and people are capitalizing on it now.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:42] I would imagine because of your work, you do meet a lot of, you know, kind of professional athletes that would have an interest in this. Are there when they’re doing a venture, is there maybe some do’s and don’ts you would recommend for an athlete that’s thinking about investing? What are some of the things that are kind of must have skills and maybe some of the things that are red flag or, you know, maybe not even a red flag, but just kind of you’ve got to educate them on like managing their expectations.

Joe Dupriest: [00:10:15] Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a couple of things. One is certainly pairing themselves with somebody that’s experienced in this area that’s sort of been there and done that and can kind of guide them along the way. So I’ve seen some interesting, you know, VC or angel partnerships with athletes and going in together. I think that that really helps the athlete. You know, one similar to the founder, knowing what they don’t know, the athlete knowing what they don’t know about the space and being open to learning that. So pairing with the right mentor in the investing space is important. And I think it’s also just making sure that if they’re looking at startups or founders, making sure that it’s authentic to what they do, their own personal brand, that there’s really a there’s a fit there because it’s if it’s an obvious not fit that’s going to become obvious to investor, it’s going to be become obvious to potential customers. So just really making sure that it fits in with their greater vision of what they want for themselves both now and down the road.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] Now, in your career, when you started out, were you always in sports?

Joe Dupriest: [00:11:15] My vision for myself. Well, I guess my assumption for myself, I should say, was going to be an engineer. So growing up, I was always, you know, really good at math and science. So I’ll go to Georgia Tech, I’ll be an engineer, went in there as a mechanical engineer, decided about a year later, I don’t really want to be a mechanical engineer, but engineering makes sense. Marty Here, go down the industrial engineering path. I did that, worked at FedEx for a few years and even then it’s like, I don’t know, this is really what I want to do now that I’m into it. It’s what you’re what kind of rises to the top of your school grades and isn’t necessarily where you would be happiest. And so that’s where I sort of made it sort of making a pivot, which actually started when I was at Georgia Tech. We had a project. You talk to somebody in the industry we were interested in and I blindly reached out the assistant general manager of the Atlanta Braves, Dean Taylor, back in the early, mid late nineties, you know, had a conversation there. Even when I got the FedEx was talking to Memphis, Redbirds and other companies and then I went back to business school. My whole concept there was I want to get into sports marketing and look at anything else besides sports marketing. I didn’t get sucked into the big brands or other other companies that were recruiting on campus, really just focused on that side. And that was. I graduated there in oh four, landed a job with the Philadelphia Eagles right out of school. And then it’s just been kind of bouncing between teams and, you know, kind of up and down I-95 until I eventually launched this company a few years ago. But that was I kind of had an idea early, but it wasn’t until I really got to business school and really, really got to force the issue and focus on it.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:52] So like when you were in high school, in college, you were interested in sports, but you never kind of connected the dots at the time that, Hey, maybe I should be pursuing this. You’re like, Hey, I’m good at math, so I’m going to do this engineering thing and play that out.

Joe Dupriest: [00:13:06] Exactly. And then it was much different. If you look at sports in the late nineties or early, even into up to like 2010, you know, you didn’t really see research data analytics departments within sports and. I wasn’t really at the time, you know, early on it was like you do sports or you do this. It wasn’t really, hey, you do both. And sports wasn’t run the same. It is if you look at the executive line on a lot of these teams, you know, it’s it’s a lot of people that come from other industries or it’s it’s not built as much around sports fans as is more like a business than it was 25 years ago. And so I think that opened the doors a lot, which is also great for me because I was able to leverage when I was at Duke, I did a summer internship with the Durham Bulls triple-A team, and my project was Market Research. I built some case studies around their sponsorships. It’s a lot of analytics that nobody had done. I ran a regression analysis for a couple of NHL teams or on their ticket sales. It was all brand new at the time, so it was easy for me to carve that niche and it was really, Hey, it’s not one or the other. Hey, I can leverage the stuff I’m really good at to get into this. And now, you know, marketing and sales and everything else within sports is very data analytic driven. But back then it wasn’t. But I did. I kind of hit it at the right time that I was able to leverage the prior life with what is the current.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:28] Right now it looks like you’re the strategic genius that played this exactly right.

Joe Dupriest: [00:14:34] Yeah, that’s what I try to say. A little luck in the timing and, you know, meeting the right people here and there. And even when I talk about my time at Duke, I landed the Eagles job kind of right out. It was kind of right place, right time. But it was also part of my 200 phone call of, you know, marketing here. You know, getting everybody I could talk to across sports, you know, talking to and and the 201. Ended up being the one. Okay, here’s a perfect job of the perfect fit with looking for my exact skill set. Not good enough as it eventually lands.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:07] Now, can you talk a little bit about start up Showdown, your mentor with them? How did that get on your radar and what was that experience like for you?

Joe Dupriest: [00:15:16] Yeah. So one of the VP’s there, Dustin. So I’m based in Atlanta, as is he. We met through a mutual friend. I was looking for mentorship on my own end around the venture side and raising a fund. And we we run our own demo day events as well through through next up. It’s a smaller scale and no investment necessarily from us, but it’s just more of a traditional demo day event. So he and I were talking and I want to get more and more involved. I want to meet more startups. I’m really enjoying this process, my Techstars mentor as well. So I’ve gotten exposed to that. And then kind of through our conversations, he introduced me to some people on his team. Describe what it was like. Hey, this is perfect. This is exactly what I want to get more involved in. And it was interesting too, because obviously, you know, panoramic does a pretty good bit in sports, but it’s much broader. So it was exposure to other early stages that aren’t necessarily directly in what I do day to day of next up. And so that that was really appealing to me as well. But yeah, it’s been a nice process and I really enjoyed it.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:22] And if you were advising that first time founder, the person that maybe you were mentoring during Startup Showdown, what what’s kind of a piece of advice that you would say to them in order for them to get the most out of their experience?

Joe Dupriest: [00:16:34] Yeah. I mean, it’s listen and be open to feedback, ask questions, but don’t take it as just a pure pitch to your mentor. Take it as a true mentor opportunity. Because there’s there’s a number of things that I’ve seen, you know, kind of taking it back a little bit to sports tech. It seems like there’s a few problems that a lot of the startups that we talk to and work with. One is it takes too long to find a product market fit or realize it’s not there. You can spend too money too quickly or is not understanding the nuances and making sure you got the right team behind you for whatever, whatever industry you’re involved in. And so making sure you’re able to answer all of that, have a really good story, really tighten it up, bounce it off the mentor, listen as much as you can and dial it in and just be open of, Hey, I know my business inside out, but I know there’s a lot that I don’t know and I’m here to learn and absorb everything. And the good thing about it as well, you get to interact with a lot of different mentors. So you’re not just taking the advice of one. You know, you get a number of different perspectives that can then be hone your story and hone your pitch and really answer a lot of the tough questions that you know you’re going to hit when you really go out on the investment trail and try to start raising that money.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:43] Yeah, to me, that’s the kind of the art form of being a startup founders is threading the needle between, you know, having the confidence to do something this hard and also having the vulnerability and humility to listen to other people.

Joe Dupriest: [00:17:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, you see a lot of different early on. I mean, you see some startups that they basically think that they’re doing me a favor by pitching me and engaging with me, whereas a lot of the others like they really want. The mentorship they really want to absorb and learn. And those are the ones that are ultimately going to be successful because your exact business model now is probably not the one that’s going to be successful. It’s probably some derivative of that, some things that you’re going to learn throughout this process. So as much as you can start learning and avoid getting quicker to market, not burning through money because it’s really easy to do if you’re going down the wrong path to run out of money before you fix it. So as much as you’re able to do that and I would take that same philosophy with you, take money from it, people that write checks are great, but people that were really invested in your business are going to want to help you and mentor you along the way there because you don’t want mentorship. Shouldn’t be just a one time conversation. You need to. These mentors that are really going to guide you along the way and be engaged with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:03] Amen to that. Well, Joe, if somebody wants to learn more about next step, either ventures or partners, what are the coordinates?

Joe Dupriest: [00:19:11] Yeah, Joe at next up ventures dot net. And you can reach out to me there. If there’s any interest across the venture side and our demo day events or our advisory and consulting or just want to have a conversation, you know, I was looking at open to talk of the startups up and talking to other investors, talking to people interested in the sports tech space as well. So. Joe. Next up, ventures dot net.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:33] At the Web site.

Joe Dupriest: [00:19:35] Next up partners dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:37] All right, Joe. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Joe Dupriest: [00:19:42] I appreciate it. Thanks for the time.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:44] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:19:49] As always, thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe to the Startup Showdown podcast. So you get the latest episode as it drops wherever you listen to podcasts to learn more and apply to our next startup Showdown Pitch Competition Visit Showdown VC. That’s Showdown Dot VC. All right. That’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.