CAMDEN, N.J. — After founding basketball apparel company AND1 in 1993 around the time he graduated with an MBA from The Wharton School and selling it to American Sports Goods in 2015, Seth Berger has continued to operate in the entrepreneurial scene, although in a quieter fashion.
That changed when long-time childhood friend, former AND1 colleague and Philadelphia 76ers/New Jersey Devils/Prudential Center Chief Executive Officer Scott O’Neil came calling as the organization planned to launch an innovation and accelerator lab, a growing trend in the sports industry.
“Scott could ask me if I wanted to sell watermelons with him on the beach in Southern California, and I’d be happy to do it,” Berger said. “The initial attraction was the opportunity to work with Scott again.
“After that, I really needed to understand the accelerator and lab space. I wasn’t really familiar with it. I’ve run a few businesses part time since I sold AND1, but I haven’t been an investor or familiar with what this space is. So, the second thing I had to do was really learn what other people were doing to see how we could be unique versus putting up another flagpole in a crowded map.”
The Sixers Innovation Lab Crafted by the Kimball, which officially launched last April, is led by Berger and his counterpart Rhyan Truett, Manager of Innovation Lab Operations. When asked about what differentiates the Lab from other similar operations, Berger said there’s no standard window for when companies apply and enter the Lab nor is there a cap— at least for now — on the number of early-stage companies in the accelerator.
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“There’s no set deal structure, there’s no set timeline. We really want to think about what each company needs on an individual basis and try to meet that company’s needs,” he said, adding that that could mean financial resources, free legal assistance or feedback from within the Sixers organization itself.
“Our thought was, ‘Look, we’ve got 7,500 square feet of office space. Why don’t we take companies from seed to convert to Series A to Series B? They can stay in our lab for as long as they want. The longer they’re there, the more we can help their businesses grow. We can leverage the 76ers’ resources, the network’s of our owners and also the operational experiences of myself and Rhyan.’”
Truett added that the Sixers Innovation Lab “broke that typical accelerator model,” saying that there “isn’t just two people in the Innovation Lab — we have the whole organization behind us.”
Dylan Elder, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Monster Roster — a daily fantasy sports lineup recommender — was the first company to join the Lab last fall. After finishing his freshman year in Georgetown, Elder moved to Philadelphia to set up full-time shop.
Within the first month, Monster Roster had changed its name, the brand and the business model. Berger, O’Neil, Elder and Truett even flew to Boston to meet with Jason Robbins, Chief Executive Officer of DraftKings, to receive feedback on the product. Now Monster Roster, which recently added to MLB to its services which also includes NFL, NBA and NHL, creates over 50,000 lineups a day. According to Elder, those lineups have a success rate that’s roughly 40 percent better than the general population of lineups on DraftKings.
“That was the exact reason I was here,” Elder said of the quick rebranding process. “I knew with (the former company name and business model) and AND1 Analytics, we were selling one individual lineup, making it with our algorithm and selling it via social media or on our website. That wasn’t scalable if we wanted to get to 50,000, 100,000 customers. You can’t give that many people the same exact lineup. It wouldn’t work. I didn’t have enough experience on my own to do that but I knew coming here, this was the right place to improve the product and then to also learn a little bit along the way.”
“Dylan’s an extremely bright young kid who is ego-less if you will. All he wants to do is have Monster Roster be the best company it can be,” Berger said.
It’s a 24/7/365 operation, as Truett described, about the Innovation Lab. She and Elder regularly communicate either via call or text in the late evening hours about all things Monster Roster, which has just received a small undisclosed amount of financial support for now.
Berger said that Sixers Innovation Lab currently has three early-stages companies total, one being an esports company and another a media business, both of which will be announced in April and with a fourth coming “soon.” Consequently, he and Truett’s time will be divided across a wider portfolio but it’s something they’re mindful as they further develop the Lab and leverage technology to impact businesses.
“You can test and iterate faster and a result, you can figure out things much more quickly now that you couldn’t necessarily do 10 years ago,” Berger said. “The availability of information through the use of technology is so amazing to me. If you can keep figuring out what the right questions are to ask about a business and then you can figure out how to deploy technology to answer those questions, your business continues to iterate and improve.”