Adi Kunalic: Athletic Influence with Opendorse

Our interview of Adi Kunalic for “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes, Spotify, and premier platforms everywhere. Adi is the co-founder of Opendorse, the platform used by professional athletes and now college athletes to measure engagement metrics and easily post sponsored content on Social Media. Opendorse makes it incredibly easy for brands and influencers to make deals.

Adi shares his personal experience as a college athlete and kicker in the NFL, and how that journey led him to create Opendorse—first as a way to help his teammates calculate their worth on social media, and now as the leading platform for brand and endorsement deals for influencers.

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A transcript of the episode follows:

Jon Pfeiffer:

I am joined today by Adi Kunalic. Welcome to the podcast.

Adi Kunalic:

Thank you, Jon, for having me.

Jon Pfeiffer:

You are one of the co-founders of Opendorse, correct?

Adi Kunalic:

That is correct.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I want to ask you about that and I'm going to spend some time talking about that, but I think given who you are and what the company does, it's important to get a little bit about your background. Where are you from?

Adi Kunalic:

So originally I was born and Bosnia, and my parents and my brother and I, we escaped and then fled to Berlin, Germany in 94. So the Bosnian War, the Yugoslavian Civil War that happened around that time in the early 90s, we escaped in. So we were refugees in Berlin, Germany. So I grew up there, and when I moved to the states in 2000. So once the war had ended in Bosnia, our time in Berlin was up and so Germany at the time actually was so they would allow refugees from war torn countries to come in, however once the war ended it was either hey you've got to go back. And thankfully countries like the US were accepting, again, refugees and immigrants from countries that seemingly they were going to take a long time to recover.

So my parents and my brother and I, we moved to the states. We moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in 2000. I grew up there. In 2006 I believe was actually when I got my offer from Nebraska in my junior year.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Well I got to stop you there. So an offer from Nebraska to do what?

Adi Kunalic:

To be a placekicker.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Were you a soccer player, or how did that transition?

Adi Kunalic:

I was actually. That's part of the origin of the story. So I played soccer my entire life, and it was one of those things where I had gotten to high school and a lot of my buddies were like, "Hey man, you've got a cannon on you. Have you ever considered kicking footballs?" It always seemed attractive to me, but I just never really dabbled with it. It's kind of like you play one sport and that transition is tough, right?

But when I got to my sophomore year of high school, my biology teacher, Coach Bernette, he was a coach on the football team, so I asked him one day, I go, "Hey, do you guys need a kicker by chance?" We were maybe two or three weeks into my sophomore year, and he was like, "Not really. We've got a guy. Our quarterback, he used to kick when he was you know. He used to play soccer when he was younger, so he's kind of doing those duties." Then literally a week later, he comes to me and finds me at lunch and he goes, "Hey, you still want to try out? You still want to be a kicker?" He had to convince me because I was like, "Oh, I don't know, man. I don't know if I'm interested anymore.

And so I went and kicked a couple of footballs for him, and we just kept backing up and I kept hitting them, and he was like, "Okay, you've got the job." I was-

Jon Pfeiffer:

It's the backing up that makes the difference.

Adi Kunalic:

Yeah, yeah, it was just one after another. And back then, Jon, I didn't have any, my skills when it comes to kicking a football, which is completely different than kicking a soccer ball. I mean, you're just eyeing it, right? Soccer players, if you grew up playing soccer, the gift that you develop over time is that you can use your feet to get a ball into a certain area, and you've got to be pretty dang precise with it. So kicking a football by just eyeing it, you could pretty much get it through the goal post. It's not that difficult, but then building the routine and then getting the technique down to do it the right way, that developed over the following couple of years. But yeah, it was super fun, and I'm super happy I did it.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Now to where I interrupted you, you got an offer from the University of Nebraska to kick.

Adi Kunalic:

I did. Yeah, and they were... Another funny story just to kind of tie it back to my background is my parents obviously we came to the US with nothing, and my dad's a super hard worker and he would emphasize, just reiterate, hey education matters. You don't want to be doing some of the jobs that I have to do when you get older, and so he really pressed that upon my brother and I.

But I got my first scholarship from the University of Connecticut. Okay, I'm a junior and it's a full ride. That's what every D1 scholarship is. They're full rides. So I call my dad, or actually I'd just gotten home and I showed him the letter, and he's looking at it and he goes, "What's this?" I go, "They're going to pay for me to go to school. If I go to school there, they will pay for my education." And he goes, "No, there is no way." He goes, "In America, you have to work hard for everything you get. You're just kicking footballs. What are you talking about?" And it took him about six months to believe it. He just was like, "No, I refuse to believe that." And so it tells you just a little bit about my parents and the level of hard work that they put into making sure that we are afforded the ability to come to the US and have an opportunity to go to school and do things in life.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Right. No, I grew up on a farm, and my dad was always waiting for me to get this law stuff out of my system so I could come back to the farm.

Adi Kunalic:

He was like, "Hey, you go do your thing, but then you're going to come back here, right?"

Jon Pfeiffer:

Right, right. So while you were there, who was your roommate?

Adi Kunalic:

Blake Lawrence actually. Blake and I met during the spring game of 2007. So that was the first time we had connected, and he was like, "Hey, do you have a roommate for the summer?" And I said, "No, do you want to room together?" "Sure." And so we ended up spending that summer together, and what was crazy and it ties back to what we ended up doing later in life, but he was the guy he always had little notepads around him and he'd draw and doodle things and come up with crazy ideas and even concepts and products, and I would look at it and I'd be like, "No, that's dumb. That's dumb. That's dumb." Then every now and then I'd be like, "That's a cool idea." I was like, "That'd be super fun if we did something like that."

So our friendship that developed that summer was more than to say we're teammates on a football team, but it was I think we really started to understand each other from a, I don't want to say entrepreneurial because that wasn't a thing. You just got here. You're 18. But we definitely had a respect for each other's strengths, even early on, so I think that materialized over the coming years.

Jon Pfeiffer:

And just for the audience, he was a linebacker?

Adi Kunalic:

He was, yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I've heard you say in interviews that you were the better football player.

Adi Kunalic:

I mean, you can look at the stats, right? Me and him, if you had him on right now, we have... People that have been on calls with us before together, he will have all the kicker jokes left and right, and then I always come back and I say, "Hey, but did you actually play? Were you on the field?"

Jon Pfeiffer:

I've heard that. I've heard you say that.

Adi Kunalic:

So that's where the debate comes up. But no, he was a talented linebacker out of Kansas. So he had a promising career. I think so it was just when he was starting to really get into a groove, 2008, he was starting and he was having really good games, but he had heading into the 2009 season, he had several concussions within a yearlong span. After he had the final one I think it was his third or fourth one, that was pretty serious. The coaching staff and the trainers, they recommended hey, this is life and death down the road stuff. You should consider maybe not playing football anymore, and he had to make a really tough decision.

Thankfully, he did that because I think concussions are one of those things where you wake up one day when you're 30 and you start to forget certain things, and you're like, "Oh my god. I should have taken care of myself when I could."

Jon Pfeiffer:

Now, I will tell you that what you should do next time he makes the kicker joke is just remind him that Justin Turner signed a 21 million guaranteed deal.

Adi Kunalic:

You're right about that. I mean...

Jon Pfeiffer:

And he doesn't get hit.

Adi Kunalic:

What's that?

Jon Pfeiffer:

And he doesn't get hit.

Adi Kunalic:

And he doesn't get hit. You're absolutely right. No, I mean the kickers now, I mean, if you look at just the contract size in general in the NFL just like with the NBA, it increases year over year, and I think people maybe at times have underestimated the value of a good kicker, but certainly now I think the games are so close and things end up coming down to a couple points. Having a good kicker can change the game.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So I got myself off track. But I want to ask you about Opendorse. It was founded in 2012.

Adi Kunalic:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon Pfeiffer:

According to LinkedIn, it is a social media publishing tool designed to help the world's most important people post with a single tap.

Adi Kunalic:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon Pfeiffer:

Okay, I want to unpack that, but tell me about the... I've heard your story about how you got here. How did you get to Opendorse in 2012?

Adi Kunalic:

Yeah, so I'm glad you brought up the LinkedIn bio because we have evolved from some of our terminology or messaging around those things, but that is definitely one of the components that makes Opendorse special and where a lot of the origins of Opendorse started. But where I'll take you back, Jon, is Blake and I, we started a company when we were seniors in college. It was the summer heading into our senior year, and it was called Hurrdat. It was a social media agency. So we, that summer, saw this opportunity that a lot of brands at the time didn't really know what social media was. This was 2010, so if you think about social media and all the traction and all the momentum it gets, it always starts out on the coast, and then as it gets into the Midwest, it's always delayed, right?

Jon Pfeiffer:

Right.

Adi Kunalic:

And businesses using social media as a tool to advance their marketing, to even have the word marketing after social media, that wasn't really a thing. It was just becoming a thing. So we saw that as an opportunity, and we decided to start this agency and really just serve a couple of local brands. And because we asked ourselves that summer, we always wanted to do something together and we knew that for me personally, football wasn't going to be there forever and I certainly was going to try to make it to the pros, but a backup plan to start something with my best friend where we can just continue to have fun, continue to innovate, and continue to work and surround ourselves with people that we care about, that'd be pretty cool, right?

And so we started that company and we were solving that problem of just finding businesses who didn't have the time, resources, or knowledge to do it themselves. And we did it, and so that grew into an agency that was about 25 employees roughly three to four years later. In that journey, we got exposed to working with larger brands, not just locally but regionally, even eventually nationally, but also in that journey, I ended up spending some time in the NFL myself. I signed a free agent deal with the Carolina Panthers, and all of our friends that we played with at Nebraska also went off to play in the NFL. Now this is back in 2010. This was the good years of Nebraska. I'm not comparing to the previous decade, but what I am saying is that that year, 2010, at the end of the year, we had 11 NFL players or former Nebraska guys that were on NFL rosters from that class. So we had a pretty stacked group of talented guys that we had played with.

So these guys are all in the NFL. They started calling us and they say, "Hey, Adi, Blake, you guys are the social media guys. There's these brands that are interested in working with us. I have no idea how to tell them how much I'm worth. How do I even grow my followers?" So what we started to do is we started to project and forecast some of these things and started creating some of our own calculators of how we would be able to say, "Hey, here's how much you're worth." And all the while, we're also building campaigns where we're going out to the local car dealership or the local hospital who is already spending money on sports saying, "Hey, how cool would it be if you had these former Husker players tweet about you and Facebook about you and Instagram about you?"

So they bought in on that, so we were starting to do in the early days these micro-endorsements with athletes. But this is where Opendorse really came to be, is there was a problem, right? Which was I would have a local company giving $5,000 so I can get out three or four posts with a set athlete. I would call that athlete. In this case, it was Niles Paul, who I played with, came in with my class. Thought I'd call Niles, I was like, "Well hey Niles, I've got five grand for you, man. They're only looking for four posts. Are you in?" And he would say, "I'm in, but you've got to talk to my agent first." Cool. Call up the agent. Agent goes, "Hey, this is great, but have you talked to Niles's lawyer? He needs to know anything that you guys are doing with contracts?" Sure. Call the lawyer. "Hey, this is great, but you should talk to his marketing rep, because his agent doesn't know what he's talking about." Call the marketing rep. Marketing rep's like, "Hey, if Niles's cousin is okay, then we can do this." And so-

Jon Pfeiffer:

Welcome to my life.

Adi Kunalic:

I know, right? So I hang up the phone and I look at Blake, and Jon, at this time my office right now, that was our whole office. He's sitting across, and he can tell I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated, and I'm just like, "What?"

He's like, "What's going on?" I'm like, "Dude, I have money for one of our friends, and I'm having to call all these people just for them to say okay or for them to be bought in," or it's a nightmare. I was like, "Why is there nothing that exists that would expedite this process or streamline it or just concentrate it into one area?" And so that's when we had the idea for Opensdorse. We didn't call it Opendorse at first, but we started building technology that would sort of be like an Amazon marketplace. You log in. You find the athlete. You could see what their followers, who they are, how many of them they had, how many of them are real, how many of them are fake, what their engagement rate is, and then we would kick in a price, an estimated price per post out, and then the brand could select those athletes. This is the part of the technology that continued to stay on with Opendorse over the last decade, which was we made it incredibly easy for athletes to accept deals and ensure that the brand, like that the post actually goes out.

So the athlete's experience is simple with Opendorse. The brand comes to Opendorse. They find who they want to work with. They build a deal. They check out. They put in the post in the message. The athlete gets a text message that says, "Hey, you have a new deal from Opendorse. Click right here." They click. It opens up a web app, and it tells them, "Pepsi is going to pay you 500 bucks to share this on Facebook at 2:00 on Friday. Click accept." They can click approve, green button, click you want to pass, gray button. If they click approve, that post would automatically go out on their account, on their channel, and then the brand would see on their dashboard that it went out, what the engagements were, what the clicks were, what the impressions were, and everybody was... And then the cool part was we also added the approval cadence up in the event that the marketing rep wants to be involved, the agent wants to be involved. They get to see the whole thing as it went through the process.

So we solved that problem, and we built this again, initially under the Hurrdat umbrella, our agency, but we were like this is a separate company. This is a software company, and we should turn this in. We should go raise some money and make this a thing. So in 2012 is when we had the idea. 2013 is when we decided to raise some money and then really officially launched everything in 2014 and really got going, and the rest is we'll talk about it.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Right. So as an athlete, if... Actually let me get to the marketing part first. Do you reach out to the athletes, or do the athletes reach out to you?

Adi Kunalic:

Good question. So it's a little bit of both. What I will say though is athletes, we don't ever reach out to athletes. It has always been on behalf of the brands. So in the early days, what really acted as a catalyst for us was we were doing deals with just kind of our internal closer network initially, and then the agents start to get a hang of this. They were hearing about it, and they'd be like, "Hey, can I put my athletes on here so they can get more deals?"

Jon Pfeiffer:

I want my 10 percent.

Adi Kunalic:

Yeah, right. And so we're like sure. So then the NFL PA called us and they said, "Hey, we've been hearing-"

Jon Pfeiffer:

Just for listeners, the NFL PA is the Player's Association.

Adi Kunalic:

The NFL Player's Association.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Yes.

Adi Kunalic:

That is correct. They called us and they're like, "Hey, we've been hearing that you've done some deals with some NFL players and they like the process. Can you tell us a little bit more?" So we get on the phone with them, and we show them the process and they're like, "This is great. Would you be open to partnering with us because we have all these sponsors and all these licensees who have been really looking for a way to work with all 2,000 NFL players that are active on active rosters?"

And so we're like sure...

Jon Pfeiffer:

It's like it's a trick question, right?

Adi Kunalic:

Yeah. I'm like, "We're just six months into doing this, guys. We'll definitely do whatever you want." So we ended up structuring a deal with them, and it was cool because the other thing that it exposed us to, Jon, was that we ended up getting exposure to all the sports agencies, right? So Octagon, Wasserman, CAA... so we get exposure to all of them and their brands, and so they kind of start looking at us as a tool, as a utility, as a way for them to do more campaigns with their brands at scale. That's how we really started chipping away at that.

So to your earlier question about do we ask the athletes to join or does that happen indirectly or do they come to us, well through that exposure, the brands, if they're wanting to work with a certain set of athletes, we would then reach out to their agents and be like, "Hey, so and so brand is interested in working with your athletes. This is going to be the easiest money that you will ever make and the easiest money that your athlete will ever make, and it will be compliant, and it will be tracked, and everybody will know." Because that was the other promise that we made to the NFL PA was that they felt like there was the wild wild west sometimes with agents. These deals would be done and maybe cash was being paid to an agent, but they're only giving an athlete so much.

Now, I don't know if that's true. You would assume or hope that that's not the case. I think that's maybe a little bit more outdated, but at the same time, there was no... Everything was done through faxes and papers and spreadsheets. What's going on here? We were like we will give you oversight, so not only will you know what athletes are getting deals, but you'll know how much money they're actually getting paid and these athletes will never feel like they are being used for whatever. If they want a certain amount of dollars, let's give them those dollars, and let's make this whole process transparent.

So all those functionalities around compliance and tracking was very much fundamental part of Opendorse in the early days, but we didn't know how much it was going to play in today's world and the importance of it, and it was a big part of it.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Yeah. So now let's flip it a second. What about a brand, if a brand wants to work with you, they just come to you and say, "Hey, we want to sign up and we would like to work with A, B, players."

Adi Kunalic:

That is correct. So for the most part, we have our product deals, which there is a managed component to it or there is a self- serve component to it. The managed component is manged service deals is EA Sports comes to us. They say, "Hey. We've got a new game coming out next week. We're looking to do a promotion around it. We would love a couple of NBA players, a couple of NFL players, and maybe some MLF players." And so then Opendorse goes in and we have data on insights and we can look up and see okay, what's your budget, who do you want to reach, what markets, and we can kind of propose to them, hey, here's all the lists of athletes that you can consider. They make their own decision on who they want to work with, but we're able to present them with raw data that they can look at and they can see where will their money go the furthest and what can they expect to happen if they were to work with these set athletes.

And then that's all packaged up, and then the coolest part about it is there's a lot of data companies out there or even marketplaces out there. The beauty of Opendorse is the execution, right? Not only are you going to find the right athletes, but when you're executing the campaign, it's all done using technology. So never again do you have to worry that why didn't-

Jon Pfeiffer:

Why didn't they post?

Adi Kunalic:

Yeah, exactly. Why didn't Robert Griffin III post? Why did he send that Adidas post out at 12:00 at midnight on a Tuesday when it was supposed to be the weekend before? What's going on here? And so that entire process was streamlined, and the agents also loved that part of it because they're like, "I'm getting text messages from a brand asking me to talk to my athlete. They have got a game tomorrow. I don't want to bother them." And we're like, "This should be as easy as clicking a button, so why don't you let us do it?"

Jon Pfeiffer:

So this is like Buffer on steroids.

Adi Kunalic:

That's a good way to put it. It's like a Buffer for athletes an Buffer on steroids, yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Yeah. So I wanted to ask you about, you were talking about the brand utility for engagement. How do you define it and how do you measure it?

Adi Kunalic:

As far as engagement goes?

Jon Pfeiffer:

Yes, for the brands.

Adi Kunalic:

So we track the traditional social media metrics that are in there, and then we also have... So if a social post goes out, say somebody posts something on Twitter, we have all of the stuff from video views from clicks if there was a link, and all those things.

Now, what is cool about Opendorse is we have token access to these accounts, right? Because the athletes to allow us to post on their channels, pending their approval, we have access to the actual raw data, so the true analytics and insights of post, whereas when you are scraping or if you are using third party tools to get insights on a post, you will never, ever be able to get those accurate data points that the user themselves has, okay? So we use that, and we package that.

The other piece that we have is we sort of take in all of the deals that have ever been done through the Opendorse platform, and then we sort through all that and then we have some of our own kind of proprietary formulas that we apply to that to give out different estimates. Okay, this athlete and this for with this following typically if they're sharing something, this is the engagement that we can predict or these are the impressions that we can predict if they're talking about these types of brands and these types of verticals. So some of that stuff is our analysts and their magic, but for the most part, we are able to get some of the most raw data on all the different platforms that are being posted on.

Jon Pfeiffer:

And in preparation for this, I went on your website and you can download a free report talking about engagement of.... which I did.

Adi Kunalic:

Yeah, good.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Of the athlete versus the team versus the league, and it makes sense that the athlete is far more engaging than a team or a league.

Adi Kunalic:

They are.

Jon Pfeiffer:

What is the data that you've found?

Adi Kunalic:

So we, I mean the one metric that we constantly, it's in our marketing scheme now, but an athlete is 20 times more engaging than a team and league combined, right? And the reason is, is because people they stop their scroll for faces, but they don't stop it for logos. So on any given day, a team, if it's sharing sponsor content, say they might share 25 posts a day on their channel where an athlete might share six posts a month, right? So the posts are actually a lot more concentrated and they're a lot more relevant. They're a lot more engaging, and so what we know is that when you then put all that stuff together, you've got a lot more frequency going out on those team and league accounts, which rightfully so. It should be that way, and athletes are a little bit more selective with what they share.

Now you have, I would say, the JuJu Smith-Schusters, right? Which he is in his own kind of range or own stratosphere in terms of he's the perfect athlete and marketer, right? Because the thing I try to explain to people all the time is Opendorse is for athletes and it exists for athletes because it doesn't change an athlete's life. We enable them to use social media to grow their personal brands, but they continue to focus on the field because 90 percent if not more of athletes, they're not really good marketers. They are followed because they are incredible on the field, and that's great.

I think that trend is maybe changing because more athletes are starting to really see what's good out there. They're starting to educate themselves. They're starting to really understand how to use social media and how to grow their personal brand, which is great. We love that, and we champion that, but you only have about a fraction of athletes who are really good at being good marketers, which is a level of understanding of really knowing how to position yourself, what your audience craves, and also making sure that you are maintaining your status on the field and being an impactful player.

Jon Pfeiffer:

All they have to do is look to Michael Jordan.

Adi Kunalic:

I mean, right? That's the thing. I make this joke. So we'll speak to student athletes all the time, and I always tell them the joke. Usually towards the end of the presentation I'm like, "Guys, you can do all the stuff that we're telling you that you can do or all these tactics and how-tos and strategies and counting calendars and that's great, but the easiest way for you to grow your following is just performance on the field."

Jon Pfeiffer:

Yeah.

Adi Kunalic:

I was like, "If you are good on the field and that's how you stand out, your followers will grow." And then I was like, "Because an athlete that's incredible on the field, they're remembered. Their brand sort of comes out. It speaks for itself." And I was like, "You can post a picture of a tomato, and people will like it." Right? And so I was like-

Jon Pfeiffer:

If that's tomato's won six champions, you can.

Adi Kunalic:

Exactly, yeah. Michael Jordan could literally start a Twitter account tomorrow and he would probably have a million followers by Friday or by the weekend.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So I want to shift gears a second. You're talking about talking to students and athletes. There are two emerging segments. One is huge, and one is not as big, but it's still kind of surprising. I'm going to do the smaller one first, which is high schools.

Adi Kunalic:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon Pfeiffer:

Why are high schools buying into this, and why are high school athletes buying into this?

Adi Kunalic:

I think it is a trend. I think social media has a huge impact on it, right? So there's so much exposure now to video footage and to recruiting and to branding and to building audiences. Some of the recruits that are coming into college now, I mean compared to when I was. When I was coming to Nebraska back in 2007, there was Myspace and Facebook had just kind of become a thing. They still had the invite. Somebody from college had to invite you to be in the network, right? And so we didn't have Instagram. Twitter still hadn't really popped up. It came on the scene I would say around 2008, 2009, really around the Midwest I guess if you want to say it that way.

But so there wasn't that much exposure. You basically played football or basketball, whatever. You would record yourself. You would take that VHS, right? And then you would freaking do a copy of that and you would mail it in and you would hope that people see you.

Jon Pfeiffer:

That somebody looked at it.

Adi Kunalic:

That a coach somewhere in Montana or Seattle or Nebraska or Clemson that they see you and that they want to give you an offer. Now the game is completely different now. You can get recruited now, right? There's things like Hudl, which is a company here down the street, also start up, started probably four years before Hurrdat and Opendorse did, but they provide video software to every high school in the US and now globally to sports. And the problem that they saw was that those VHSs that I was talking about, that's how coaches used to exchange film, is that night they would take that VHS film, they'd put it in, they'd cut it up. They would travel across town, exchange videos, and it was kind of a code, like I'm going to give you my footage and you give me yours, and then we'll play you next weekend, right?

And so that was a lot of time that they had to commit to doing that after a game. Well, what Hudl did is everything was put into the cloud. And so the other thing that they did is they completely revolutionized recruiting because now you don't have to send film in anymore. It's just like hey, check out by Hudl profile. The reason I bring them up is because that access to footage, tied to your personal brand, now literally you can, if you're 15 years old and you're playing football down in Florida somewhere and you start a Twitter account, you can have a link in your bio with the Hudl link. And it says, this is all my playing, and you can literally pin your career best five catches. So if a scout or a coach that's recruiting lands on your page, they see you and they're like, "Oh, that's an interesting player. Maybe we haven't even come across him." Right?

So that exposure, I think it kind of again, going back to what we were saying before the show, but it accelerated things. So I just think that it's a completely different ballgame now. The personal brand matters to athletes. They're also a lot savvier. So we've got this entire generation. We have new social media challenges, like TikTok coming out. There's so much creativity that's being poured into these channels by kids that are 11, 12, 13, 14 years old. So I think that they're growing up in a world where everything is digital, and I think that's just putting that kind of everything front and center for everyone to see.

Jon Pfeiffer:

And then the last, the big change that's coming and coming fast is the name, image, and likeness. It first started with legislation in California, and Nebraska was pretty close to follow, but they passed laws saying that student athletes could use their name, image, and likeness to make money.

Adi Kunalic:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon Pfeiffer:

Which the NCAA, as you're well aware, has a rule that says you can't because the NCAA wrote Gavin Newsom before he signed the legislation saying, "This is unconstitutional. We're going to fight it." But then a week later, did an about face. They then did in April, they released a 32 page report, and there is a vote set for next month to allow college athletes to use their name, image, and likeness to make money. First before I get into that, do you know the date of the vote?

Adi Kunalic:

I don't know the exact date. I've been pretty heads down on. I would say in our world, there's the vote. There's NIL and whatnot, and there's certain things that are kind of out of our control, and we have these loose dates in our head, but I'm like I got to do business as usual, and so whatever is the outcome of that vote, we'll deal with it when we get there.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I can't find the date. It's why I'm asking.

Adi Kunalic:

Yeah, I think they've... There's got to be one, but to your point, it's next month. I know it's next month. I know because it's been building up to this, and I also know it's next month because they are set to go live in August. They're going to need actual technology to allow to do this, all the stuff that's going to happen in a compliant way. So we're kind of running against a timeline if you will.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So you have developed programs for universities in anticipation of this.

Adi Kunalic:

That is correct.

Jon Pfeiffer:

And one of them was University of Nebraska, one of the very first I believe.

Adi Kunalic:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), they were the first ones, yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:

How interesting that pitch was made to them first.

Adi Kunalic:

It is. I will say, so the Ready Now Program, it was the first of a kind NIL program in history because this wasn't a thing. If you just date back all the way to last summer, so 2019 is when I think the NCAA started to have discussions about potentially building up a working group and asking sort of professionals in the space of athletes and endorsements and all the stuff around the name, image, and likeness if you want to look at it on the pro space. So those kind of inklings started. We were asked to submit what we believed could be a potential future model, and so some of that stuff, our conversations started all the way back then.

Now, what was cool for Opendorse is that we've been building this company in anticipation of this happening, but we didn't know if it was going to happen in time for us to actually do something about it because when you start a company, as an entrepreneur, I always tell people it's the only career that doesn't have a timeline. There's not end date, and there's no how to. Everything is kind of up in the air, right? And so but it was on our side. So when once we started hearing that this was a potential change that was coming and that there was a desire to move to a structure where athletes could get compensated, we were like, "Oh my god. Our entire business was built for this model."

Jon Pfeiffer:

On that model.

Adi Kunalic:

And so what we did is we looked at okay, what would be the easiest way for us to take all of the institutional knowledge that we have built over the last eight years, all of our technology, all of our experiences, and try to build a marketplace back in 2012, and then iterating on that and then building a very strong social media publishing tool and then a content sharing, all these things, and if we had to rebuild it, what would it look like?

So Nebraska actually came to us in December of 2019 and they were like, "Hey, they're hearing things about the NCAA starting to kind of go down this path. They're establishing a working group." And what was cool about it is they're across the street, they come over here, and the cool thing about it was they were like, "Hey, what can we do together because we want to be first and we want to invest. We want to show athletes that we're going to invest in their personal brands," because they'd already been doing it through using Opendorse by making content available to them, sending that. Those things were already happening, but they were like, "We want to know as much as we can about what you know and we want to build really cool a program and hopefully we can do it together that helps us educate. It helps us provide information. It helps us coach. It helps these athletes really understand what their personal brands mean and what their name, image, and likeness is valued at." And so that's where a lot of the stuff was born, and then in March is when we announced the partnership.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Since then, at least publicly, I've seen announcements that K-State, TCU, BYU, Louisville, Fresno State, Wake Forest, and I'm sure there's a lot more, but these are the ones that publicly announced they're signed up with you guys.

Adi Kunalic:

Yep, so far we have publicly announced, I'm looking at the list. We have 15 Ready Partners who have come onto the program. I don't know how many we've publicly announced. I would say maybe about half or more of those have been publicly announced. Some are going to be doing it in the coming weeks and months.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I went pretty deep into Google to see how many I could find.

Adi Kunalic:

I appreciate you doing that because, Jon, it's a big deal because here's what I tell people all the time, is in recruiting you need an edge and a school if you're considering, if you're a high school athlete and you're like, "Okay, I've got all these offers," and one of the schools has a program that's going to invest in you, helping you with name, image, and likeness, they have a partner who understands that ecosystem. So it's like okay, if I go there, I will benefit from understanding how to do these things, how to grow my personal brand and then hopefully when everything is passed and everything is in action and active, I'm able to make some money.

So all the schools, and it doesn't have to be with Opendorse. There's other programs who are doing things independently. They're hiring different staff, people with different experiences, and we're like do it because the market needs to know that this is a real thing. And then as with anything that happens where there's a lot of buzz and a lot of momentum over the last couple of months, there's been new entrants and people are trying to jump into this world. We personally like it because it's creating the market if there's more companies...

Jon Pfeiffer:

Awareness, yeah.

Adi Kunalic:

And I think the thing that people sometimes maybe underestimate is how much you have to understand about marketplaces, about agents, about professional athletes. It's not just jumping into it and thinking that athletes are going to trust you and whatnot, because I'm sure so you've been working, you've told me you work with a lot of influencers and you represent them and that it's the same thing. The number one thing in that world as with athletes is trust, and agents, it takes a long time to get their trust. Pro athletes, it takes a very long time to get their trust. The associations, it takes a very long time to get their trust. That's why PGA Tour, NFL PA, MLB PA, MB PA, all these large organizations, Team USA, USOPC, all these large organizations have put their trust in Opendorse, so we're very protective of that, and we have been doing our best to just, again, package it all and let the market know hey, we're here for this. We're going to protect the athletes. We're going to give you a compliant and easy way to work with them, and hopefully by being able to push this we will be able to grow the market together.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Well, I mean I tell my clients that you are a start up.

Adi Kunalic:

Yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I mean, you're a start up company, and it's been this way for, since the start of time that people have to know you, like you, and trust you, people that want to do business with you.

Adi Kunalic:

Absolutely.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So I'm going to ask you to as we head into the final stretch, look at your crystal ball, and where will this be as it relates to student athletes, where will this be in three years, where will this be in five years?

Adi Kunalic:

That's a great question. This is a... Here's where it's going to go. I think adoption over the in 2021, it will obviously happen in the later part of the year, and it will maybe we won't have as many athletes immediately signing up, but I think over the next couple years, it will start to just increase. And I think that people are, I don't have exact numbers to give you, but I think people are also underestimating how many local sponsors in college sports-

Jon Pfeiffer:

Want to do this.

Adi Kunalic:

Love to work with a volleyball player or with a basketball player or they would love that. They would love to have them at an autograph signing or to have them say something because there's a lot of value in that, and there's a cool factor to it, and they're frankly tired of spending money on radio and signage.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Right.

Adi Kunalic:

Well okay, cool. People have seen that. And so there's going to be, I think once those first couple of months are done and the kinks are starting to be worked out, this is going to explode. Now the big belief that we have and we share as a company is that what's going to happen is I think that the professional ranks are eventually going to emulate and do more of what the NCAA and student athletes are doing and here's why. Because from day one, this endorsement space or ecosystem will be built on technology and transparency and streamlining and so you don't really have any of those bad actors. They can't get in, okay? So I think the endorsement industry has really suffered from that is that in order for you to change it, it would just require a heavy, heavy, heavy lift. And you're talking about trying to change habits of agents and marketing reps.

There's no way, whereas this is starting from technology from day one and yes, Trevor Lawrence and some of the bigger name athletes, are they going to have agent representation? Sure, but what's going to happen is I think that over the next three to five years the professional ecosystem will look at this and say, "Hey, how can we have a similar set up to the way that this is set up because it allows for transparency. It allows for everyone to kind of stay on top of each other." It will also provide way more access, right?

So I think if there's anything we learn is the cameo effect. A year ago, if you're a talent rep at CAA or Wasserman, you might be laughing at cameo. You're like, "Oh, what brands are going to spend money with these?" Or "How many fans are going to do this?" But a year later you're like, "Holy shit." There is a lot of fans that the fan to creator or influencer connection, they've really exposed that. They said that there is people, there is fans. They're willing to spend 50, 100 bucks to get a shout out. Now imagine if you applied that to the entire world. It could really blow up. So I think that there's going to be a lot more transparency. Again, there's going to be a lot more compliance. There's going to be a lot more technology, and I think that whatever is done with the NCAA and all their tech vendors and partners will be something that the professional ranks will try to do as well.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So my last question is where can people find you?

Adi Kunalic:

Where can people find Opendorse? We are Opendorse on Twitter. Just search Opendorse, O-P-E-N-D-O-R-S-E, like open endorsement. So you can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Instagram. And our website too is Opendorse.com, and yeah. If you give us a follow, we put some pretty cool stuff out. Our social media team is really good at what they do, and something that Blake and I are very proud of is the brand matters to us. It matters to us a lot. We can be pretty picky about some of the stuff, but I think that again, the next 12 months, the next two years, three years are going to be super fun for athletes, for student athletes, for incoming to college athletes, and will be pretty cool to see what happens.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Thank you very much.

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