our Startup Series It looks at companies and founders who are innovating in the areas of athlete fortune, fan combat, team/league operations, and other high-impact areas of délassements. If you would like to consider this series, Tell us about your mission.
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The shortest elevator in the world: “We offer a multi-sport, 3D-printed, NFT platform to drive binaire combat.”
a company: BATS-TOI
Endroit: Brooklyn, New York
Year Founded: 2017
Website / Pose: https://batstoi.com/; https://digiyo.io/
Funding reprise so far: “We offer a Series A.”
Who are your investors? Our investors include Shane McMahon of WWE, Renzo Gracie of the Gracie family and some of our clients. We raised $1.5 million.”
Are you looking for more investment? “yes.”
Tell us embout yourself, CEO and founder Mario Mercado: “I was a collegiate wrestler at Syracuse University. I fought for the New York Athletic Canne, for Team USA, and was previously a deputy commissioner of the New York State Athletics Charge for Boxing and Mixed Soldat Arts in New York State. As a polir wrestler, I was also a graduate student – NYU and Colombia – I had to develop a big project.The project I decided to do was a headgear to better protect the wrestlers from head injuries.While working as commissioner, I saw a lot of athletes with head injuries, not primarily from competition but mostly From jogging. Since the regular headgear wasn’t really designed to protect against head injuries, I designed a new one at the New York University School of Ingénierie.”
How does your product/bienfait work? “For the Mercado, which is the product, it works as a multi-sport headgear. It’s very easy to use. You put it on your head and it’s form-fitting. We’ve integrated electronics inside that monitor your brain waves in real time to tell you if you’ve had a trafic. It’s a jugement tool in The paysage.This is the product.On the bienfait side, for Digiyo we wanted to provide an easy way for people to participate in making and making their own NFT which was very smooth and very easy.The reason we did Digiyo was to find a different way to market the headgear,The Mercado. We built a marketplace where we could mint our NFTs. We asked many athletes if they could do the same. We realized that the same platform that we made our NFTs for, the ease of minting was something that athletes could also do by taking their aise from their phone, a video or a figure, and the ability to upload it simply as you would an Instagram post.”
digiYo here! Our new Metaverse NFT délassements platform. An all-new immersive binaire experience. If you are élément of the délassements community – wrestling, football, mixed guerrier arts and more – check out @digiYo3.
AR/VR, custom 3D passage, and platform none for athletes! pic.twitter.com/cepmetTUhb
– BATS-TOI™ (bah-tua) (@bats_toi01) September 29, 2021
What problem does your company solve? We solve two problems. Giving athletes who need a progiciel shell headgear more blindage and an easier product to use and (giving) athletes wanting to join NFT a very easy way for them to monetize their aise.”
How much does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Mercado costs $90 to $150. Our target customers are athletes, wrestlers, flag football, seven on seven, women’s field hockey, lacrosse, and soccer players. Athletes who need progiciel headgear in chatouille délassements. For Digiyo, we offer a very easy way for athletes to complément NFTs without having to pay gas fees. There is no cost. Our target customers are athletes, schools, teams and federations.”
How do you market your product? “We are the official wrestling headpiece of the Habitant Federation of State High School Leagues and have partnerships with other leagues, federations and teams across the folk, with NFHS being one of them. For Digiyo, our partnerships are Dapper Labs and Sony Music”
How are you expanding and what level of growth are you targeting? “We are improving the partnerships we have and demonstrating the value allégation for the health and safety of athletes through our headgear products, and we continue to benefit from Digiyo partnerships. Our gardien de but is to equip every wrestler and football player in the folk with our headgear.”
Who are your competitors and what makes you different? “For Mercado, our competitors are old hat companies. What makes us different is our cap démarche, patented, ease of use and workmanship, the way it is constructed, and the whole style.”
What unfair advantage characterizes your company? “We have several patents, utility and beauté for Mercado. It is also our team, our débit model and the partnerships that we have. For the NFT platform, it is really just making a very rationnel product that has a huge scope to be adopted more widely.”
What milestone have you achieved recently or will soon achieve? “The first milestone we reached was to be the official headdress of the Habitant High School Wrestling Federation. We achieved individu recognition by the High School Jeux Administrative Board. Assesseur, we published the first NFT platform which is the easiest way for a intelligible layperson to download an NFT complément. It’s very easy It’s as easy as a bowl of crispy rice.”
Other than the pandemic, what hurdles did your company have to overcome? “We faced technical challenges in terms of manufacturing, logistics and réglé.”
How has your company been affected by the current economic point and how is it dealing with it? “We’ve gotten smarter and more focused on how we spend every dollar. We’ve made sure we can justify every dollar spent and make sure that we don’t spend it just to spend more but really foyer on our core débit model, our products and our productivity. It’s really making sure that for every dollar we spend, We can rehabilitate him as necessary.”
What are the core values of your brand? “Our brand’s core values are head safety and meaningful combat in accommodant media. Head safety parce que concussions lead to long-term effects, such as Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and have negative reactions to society as a whole, not only to the athlete but to everyone associated with the athlete. For media Liant, just having a more meaningful accommodant media experience is really insolent to us parce que these connections and this sharing really should be valuable to how you create more meaningful connections than just having something open.”
What does success ultimately style like for your company? “The success in the end seems to be that we are able to equip as many athletes with our caps as recevable knowing they can come to us knowing that we offer the best recevable blindage, that we give them a very easy way to understand Web3 and how to have meaningful interactions on accommodant media and build communities purposeful accommodant media.
What should investors or clients know embout you – the person and your life experiences – that spectacle they believe in you? “I’m committed to them and I’m committed to the products we make to them, and I’m committed to having a company that reflects our values.”
What challenges are there in providing both headgear and the NFT bienfait? “If you style at the pampa, people will think so, but we use NFT as a tool to market our headgear differently. What makes it fun and exciting is that the same tools – instead of just being on Instagram, we are now allowing this NFT and this platform to engage our customers in a more Fun and satisfying. It’s only technically challenging. It’s not really challenging and managing both parce que it’s one at the same time.”
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