Episode #232 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Tiffany Kelly, Co-Founder & CEO of Curastory.
The world of sports and media has been radically changing. Not to date myself, but I remember back in college, it seemed like ESPN was continuously on. It was our go-to for breaking news and SportsCenter gave us the scores and highlights from the day prior. Now, you go to Twitter and other social media outlets if you need to find out what happened or to catch the highlights from a game.
As part of this evolution, athletes are building their own personal brands and engaging with their fans through social media. Even college athletes can now earn money from their name, image, and likeness.
Tiffany’s experience in the sports industry gave her a front row view of where things were heading. She discovered a need in the market to build a company around this trend. If athletes are now content creators, they need an easy way to create this content and once they build up a following, they need an easy way to monetize it.
Thus, Curastory was born. A video creation and monetization platform that is initially targeting athletes, but the company certainly has ambitious plans to eventually grow to other categories. Curastory recently announced a new $2.1M round of funding which included Lightspeed, Techstars, Randi Zuckerberg, and others.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover:
- A discussion around the evolution of sports and media.
- Tiffany’s background growing up and how she discovered the world of sports analytics.
- All the details on her role as part of the Sports Analytics team at ESPN and the origination of the Fan Happiness Index.
- The aha moment that led Tiffanny down the path of starting Curastory and the company’s progress to date.
- Advice for diverse founders on raising capital.
- And so much more.
Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.