The Player’s Health platform is managing the health and wellness for more than 300,000 athletes. The Player’s Health team is led by former CFL (Canadian Football League) player Tyrre Burks. We provide an all in one health risk management platform for sports organizations.
Name: Player’s Health
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Website: www.playershealth.com
Product / Service Offering: Health Risk Management Platform for Athletic Organizations
Co-founder Interviewed: Tyrre Burks
Other Key Management Team Members: Alex Jensen, Customer Success Director; Dylan Wong, Marketing Director; Katelyn Geoffrion, Risk Management Director; Kari Moxness, Director of Onboarding
This article is part of our Business Startup Spotlight series featuring entrepreneurs and their companies. We hope that these founders’ interviews will inspire and motivate you as you undertake your own entrepreneurial journey.
Tell us a little about yourself with a focus on what motivates you.
One word describes that motivates me: IMPACT! I am very sensitive to everything around me. I want to leave a lasting impact on this world. Anything I create or take part in has to have that vision. There is a place for all contribution in this world, some big and some small. I operate in the enormous! I want every person that comes in contact with me or anything I create to be inspired and motivated to be more! Seeing me, a guy from the Southside of Chicago, break into technology and making an impact in his industry.
When did you establish your company and where did the idea originate?
I began the company in January 2015. I was driving home one day and on the radio was a news update about a cheerleader from Wisconsin who fell off her teammate’s shoulder and fractured her shoulder. The school basically messed up communication to the parents and EMT. It led to a lawsuit and a ton of surgeries. I started to think about my neck injury that went undiagnosed until I was 24. It happened when I was 15 and resulted in my professional career being over before it had the chance to begin. Looking back, if things were managed better, who knows? I may still be playing. I created Player’s Health to support the health and wellness of all young athletes in hopes of preventing unmanaged injuries.
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What need or needs does your company seek to fill for its customers?
An athletic organization can be held liable for taking action that increases the risk of harm to an athlete, as well as failing to take action to prevent a foreseeable risk of harm. Player’s Health is a risk management solution designed to minimize the athletic organization’s liability exposure.
What is the one thing that sets your company apart from its competitors?
We have built the best product on the market to track and manage the health of young athletes. We have established great partnerships with the industry’s largest sports registration companies. Our direct competitors are health management platforms which use similar tools and concepts to monitor an athlete’s health. These applications are at a later stage, but none of them focus on young athletes. The data they collect lives in the organization and cannot be shared. Player’s Health’s information is meant to be shared within the organization, with the parent or the athlete’s permission.
What was the biggest challenge you faced while getting your company up and running, and how did you overcome it?
Our biggest challenge in growing has been raising capital. We have decided to focus on raising capital through sales, which helps us in two ways.
- It forces us to focus only on revenue growth, with less focus on what does not affect the bottom line.
- As we continue to generate revenue month after month, we are gradually increasing the value of our company, which helps us in negotiating valuation with potential investors. You cannot argue revenue!
Are there resources you have utilized that other founders might find compelling or useful?
We have outsourced an inside/outside sales team that we hired through Upwork (http://www.upwork.com/) for a fraction of the cost and three times the productivity. We have a lead generation team in India and telemarketers in Guatemala. Scaling this model has led to a dramatic increase in sales.
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What steps have you taken to secure funding for your company and what, if anything, would you do differently if you had to start over?
There is one thing I would do differently. Before starting to talk to “institutional” investors, I would make sure we were at the right stage for them to be interested. Any conversations before at least $60 to $70K monthly recurring revenue is a waste of time.
Have there been any questions you have had as an entrepreneur of a fledgling startup that you had a particularly hard time finding the answers to?
Yes. How did you recover when money is low, sales are slow, and morale is on fumes? This is a hard one. I answer by saying, “Simplify. Simplify. Focus on the things that will help build daily momentum. Focus on momentum. Manufacture it daily.”
Is there anything else you would like to share about your company?
The Player’s Health platform is managing the health and wellness for more than 300,000 athletes. The Player’s Health team is led by former CFL (Canadian Football League) player Tyrre Burks. We provide an all-in-one health risk management platform for sports organizations. Our platform records, monitors and quantifies behaviors as they unfold, providing the visibility that has been missing from the youth sports industry. Player’s Health reduces liability for youth athletic programs, sports leagues, sports orthopedic organizations and coaches by entrusting “return-to-play” decision making to the athlete’s caregiver.
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Sandra Sloan
Sandra has previous supply chain and business operations experience which she is leveraging as an author with FundingSage focused on spotlighting entrepreneurs and their startup efforts.
