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Entrepreneur Ventures<\/a>\u00a0is an early-stage venture capital firm partnered with Entrepreneur Media that is dedicated to backing passionate and innovative founders as early as day one. In this series, we are profiling the amazing entrepreneurs Entrepreneur Ventures is working with to share their insights on building and growing a thriving business.<\/em><\/p>\n Ryan Rottman<\/a> spent more than two decades as an actor and producer, appearing on shows like 90210 and starring in nearly a dozen Hallmark films. Sean O\u2019Brien<\/a> invented a portable beach chair in his 20s that led to an eight-figure exit, then went on to co-found Autio, an audio-storytelling app, with actor Kevin Costner. Together, alongside quarterback Aaron Rodgers as co-founder, they built Athlete Agent<\/a> \u2014 a database connecting brands directly to more than 30,000 athletes across 20 leagues \u2014 with its eye on 280 more across the globe. Their client list already includes Coca-Cola, Netflix and Goldman Sachs, and they built it almost entirely without spending a penny on marketing budget. I spoke with Rottman and O\u2019Brien to talk about how it happened.<\/p>\n Dan Bova: So where did the idea for Athlete Agent even come from?<\/strong> How did you first hook up with Aaron?<\/strong> Sean, how did you end up joining as CEO?<\/strong> How do you actually gather and fact-check all this data?<\/strong> Photo credit: Athlete Agent<\/em><\/p>\n What\u2019s the business model?<\/strong> Ryan Rottman: <\/strong>What we didn\u2019t realize going in is that 90% of an agent\u2019s job is outbound. Now we\u2019re creating inbound for them, and they love us for that. We don\u2019t take any piece of the deal flow \u2014 we\u2019re simply connectors. The brands pay us to get the information, and they go do the deal.<\/p>\n What does a profile actually look like when you pull one up?<\/strong> You haven\u2019t spent a dollar on marketing, yet you\u2019ve signed Coca-Cola, Netflix and Hugo Boss. How?<\/strong> What\u2019s a lesson you\u2019ve each learned building this?<\/strong> What do you want entrepreneurs to know about Athlete Agent?<\/strong> Entrepreneur Ventures<\/a>\u00a0is an early-stage venture capital firm partnered with Entrepreneur Media that is dedicated to backing passionate and innovative founders as early as day one. In this series, we are profiling the amazing entrepreneurs Entrepreneur Ventures is working with to share their insights on building and growing a thriving business.<\/em><\/p>\n Ryan Rottman<\/a> spent more than two decades as an actor and producer, appearing on shows like 90210 and starring in nearly a dozen Hallmark films. Sean O\u2019Brien<\/a> invented a portable beach chair in his 20s that led to an eight-figure exit, then went on to co-found Autio, an audio-storytelling app, with actor Kevin Costner. Together, alongside quarterback Aaron Rodgers as co-founder, they built Athlete Agent<\/a> \u2014 a database connecting brands directly to more than 30,000 athletes across 20 leagues \u2014 with its eye on 280 more across the globe. Their client list already includes Coca-Cola, Netflix and Goldman Sachs, and they built it almost entirely without spending a penny on marketing budget. I spoke with Rottman and O\u2019Brien to talk about how it happened.<\/p>\n Dan Bova: So where did the idea for Athlete Agent even come from?<\/strong>
Ryan Rottman:<\/strong> As an actor, IMDb was my business card. Every time I walked into an audition room, casting directors were asking about my filmography \u2014 past, present, future projects. Producers from Hallmark saw me on \u201c90210,\u201d looked at my IMDb Pro account, where they list your representation information, saw who my agent was, and reached out. Because that information was correct, I\u2019ve since done around eight Hallmark films. Had it not been correct, they would\u2019ve gone down the next guy on the list. I\u2019ve also been fortunate to call Aaron Rodgers a good friend for over 17 years. We went to dinner in LA, and I said, \u201cI\u2019m so confused. I know all the athletes through you \u2014 why is there not an IMDb for athletes?\u201d He said, \u201cWho have you told?\u201d I said, \u201cA couple buddies.\u201d He said, \u201cDon\u2019t tell anyone else. There\u2019s white space for this. Let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan Rottman:<\/strong><\/strong> We played in a golf tournament, and that\u2019s one of the things I love about golf \u2014 where else can you just spend four hours with someone, sitting in a cart, understanding who they are as a person? Do they get angry when they hit the ball out of bounds? How do they handle adversity? It was such an amazing time, and we bonded over \u201cThe Big Lebowski,\u201d one of our favorite movies. We just forged a friendship after that.<\/p>\n
Sean O\u2019Brien: <\/strong>My whole career started with an invention \u2014 my friends and I built a portable chair for the beach, we got a cover story in Entrepreneur magazine, and someone from Swimways Corp read it and approached us. We sold the company for eight figures shortly after \u2014 that was my liquidity event at age 27. More recently, I co-founded Autio, an audio-storytelling app, with Kevin Costner \u2014 we raised $20 million and were on \u201cShark Tank.\u201d I was going to retire after that, and then this came across my desk. The first thing I did was buy an IMDb Pro subscription and look up Costner\u2019s team, and I thought, \u201cThis is crazy that sports doesn\u2019t have this.\u201d That\u2019s why I joined \u2014 started as CTO and got bumped up to CEO.<\/p>\n
Sean O\u2019Brien: <\/strong><\/strong> We spent $3 million building the initial database for the first 10 leagues. There\u2019s nowhere to scrape this stuff from, so it\u2019s mostly manual effort \u2014 even AI tools aren\u2019t great at it, which is why Google partnered with us. We\u2019re the only people in the world who have this data. It\u2019s relationship-driven; we have a whole research team, and we update rosters around events like trade deadlines. Agents will also notify us of changes \u2014 they\u2019ll email us and say, \u201cPull that endorsement off a profile, that deal just ended.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sean O\u2019Brien:<\/strong> It\u2019s $99 a month or $999 a year, per seat license. A company might have five accounts with us, paying roughly $5,000 a year. In the long run, we intend to do the IMDb model, where agents pay us to manage their athletes\u2019 pages too.<\/p>\n
Sean O\u2019Brien: <\/strong>Say you\u2019re a real customer like Netflix, and you want to put Travis Kelce in a new film you\u2019re developing. You come to his page, and the vitals aren\u2019t paywalled, but everything else is. You get Travis\u2019 whole team \u2014 right in the middle, you\u2019ll see his theatrical agents, and you can copy the email and go direct to the right person, rather than emailing the famous agent or the league agent, which is what people used to do. We\u2019ve got the contract values, so you can see how much money they make, plus a full endorsement list \u2014 most sites only list four or five endorsements for someone like Travis, but we have all of them, linked. We\u2019ve got all their startup investments, anything business-related that\u2019s not an endorsement, and finally, the charity work.<\/p>\n
Sean O\u2019Brien:<\/strong> They\u2019re finding us in the press, but also through AI applications \u2014 ChatGPT recommends us, Gemini recommends us. I took that data to Google, and they\u2019re now backing us through the Scale AI program, a half-million-dollar investment, and we\u2019re building a custom version of Gemini together. Out of the box, an LLM knows Red Bull and Monster are energy drink companies. What it doesn\u2019t know is whether a specific athlete has a deal in that space. We do. So a CMO could ask, \u201cFind me all the WNBA players who don\u2019t have an energy drink deal,\u201d and it pulls the profiles and contact information in one swoop.<\/p>\n
Ryan Rottman:<\/strong> A big thing for me was coming from the acting world, where 90% of the job is getting told no. You get a thick skin to understand it\u2019s not personal. On the fundraising side, when someone tells you no, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not a great idea \u2014 it just means it\u2019s not right for them. A lot of founders get told no enough times that they start thinking maybe they don\u2019t have a great idea. You just have to keep moving forward. And having Aaron is amazing \u2014 but at the end of the day, this isn\u2019t the Aaron Rodgers business. This is a standalone business.<\/p>\n
Sean O\u2019Brien: <\/strong>I want them to know that the wall has come down. If you\u2019ve got $99 a month, you can basically access any athlete. Keep the email short, and make sure what you\u2019re pitching is relevant to the person. A lot of people assume a top athlete\u2019s agent is never going to read their email \u2014 but if you have a great idea that\u2019s relevant to something that athlete cares about, you might just get a Zoom. We set those up all the time, and founders can\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Ryan Rottman:<\/strong> As an actor, IMDb was my business card. Every time I walked into an audition room, casting directors were asking about my filmography \u2014 past, present, future projects. Producers from Hallmark saw me on \u201c90210,\u201d looked at my IMDb Pro account, where they list your representation information, saw who my agent was, and reached out. Because that information was correct, I\u2019ve since done around eight Hallmark films. Had it not been correct, they would\u2019ve gone down the next guy on the list. I\u2019ve also been fortunate to call Aaron Rodgers a good friend for over 17 years. We went to dinner in LA, and I said, \u201cI\u2019m so confused. I know all the athletes through you \u2014 why is there not an IMDb for athletes?\u201d He said, \u201cWho have you told?\u201d I said, \u201cA couple buddies.\u201d He said, \u201cDon\u2019t tell anyone else. There\u2019s white space for this. Let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n