New technology from startup ventures is transforming the sports industry. The mission of this series is to introduce startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience and allow Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story. Feel free to submit your startup’s answers to the below questions or contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for this series.
Company name: Kombie
Founder(s): Baz Palmer & Stuart Berwick
Headquarters: Melbourne & Los Angeles
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Kombie is an iPhone video App that offers fans the chance to add themselves to sport’s greatest moments. Powerful and personalised super-sharing that gives the new generation of sports lovers the opportunity to directly engage with spectacular short form broadcast highlights of their favorite sporting moments. The finished Kombie clip is ready to be shared on all social networks and direct messaging apps, giving brands and rights holders for the first time ever, access and visibility in private sharing.
2. Problem & Solution
The average age of sports viewers in the USA right now is nearly 50, the kids are elsewhere because they are not seeing the action where they live. On their phones and in their social media streams. Dark share accounts for 84% of sharing now, iMessenger, WhatsApp, Line etc and there is no way for sports highlights to get into these unless they are shared by friends and influencers.
Facebook and Snapchat have hit 18 Billion video views a day. Because they are watching on their phone, not on the big screen they are no longer passive viewers. With their mobile devices they can touch their video they are watching because this is what their devices do. They want to interact. This is normal behavior for them. This is the co-creation generation.
Kombie gives this key demographic the tools to personalise and share these sporting highlights. Video and collaboration sit at the heart of our platform. We aim to make Co-creation, Collaboration and Storytelling Easy, Instant and Fun. The same goes for sharing. And in the process introduce new revenue streams for rights holders.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
Target market is Gen Z but everyone with a mobile phone either at a game or on the sofa can be potential users.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
Brand partnerships & licensing the Kombie technology
5. Management Team – with titles
Baz Palmer – Co-Founder
Stuart Berwick – Co-Founder
Rob Wells – Advisor
Frank Cotela – Advisor
David Vodicka – Legal Advisor
6. What else do you want the audience to know about your venture?
For rights-holders & brands, in fact any entertainment vertical, just upload a video highlight to the Kombie open CMS and it’s ready instantly for fans, creatives and the online community to create personalised videos with maximised share-ability.