By Cheechee Lin
Tim Curran, CEO and co-founder of Level Sports, spoke to UCLA Anderson students last week about his entrepreneurial journey as part of the Entrepreneur Association’s speaker series.
Curran founded his first company fresh out of college. As a teenager, he had been a recruited high school athlete, but he found the experience frustrating. So Curran set out to change the way college sports recruiting worked. He created Webletes, an online platform for high school and junior college athletes to gain exposure. With the aid of his brother, he also hosted Football Combine Camp to scout potential talent and to help the athletes develop portfolios. Though the road to a successful project was rocky, as he encountered various monetary and operational barriers along the way, Curran built connections with the right people, and the website eventually took off. After a couple of years in the field and extensive research, Curran decided to take this project in a different direction with Level Sports.
Curran identified four main factors to consider when starting a company: the vision, the process, the team and the networking. “[As an entrepreneur], you need passion for your vision,” he said. “Otherwise your startup will fizzle away.”
Curran also described his meticulous attention to detail in designing his first project, and the importance of surrounding himself with the right people. “Find people to complement yourself,” he said. “Bring on people who can support you.” Regarding networking, Curran emphasized venturing out, establishing a presence in the media, and doing extensive background research on potential investors before capturing their attention with a personalized touch.
Level Sports, in its twelfth month of development, is a big data sports and fitness platform that is a spinoff of Curran’s first business, Webletes. Although the project has not yet been released publicly, Curran has successfully opened doors for partnerships, garnering the attention of the NFL, NBA, Dan Gilbert, and First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Foundation, among others. “See the future, but focus on the six months,” Curran says.
The Entrepreneur Association supports student entrepreneurs by bringing in speakers like Curran, providing resources for BCO students, and establishing relations between graduate schools within UCLA as well external parties such as local startups and incubators.
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