{"id":44981,"date":"2023-10-20T15:40:09","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/shark-tank-entrepreneur-william-strange-raises-1-million-for-sports-tracking-business-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:40:09","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:40:09","slug":"shark-tank-entrepreneur-william-strange-raises-1-million-for-sports-tracking-business-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/shark-tank-entrepreneur-william-strange-raises-1-million-for-sports-tracking-business-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Shark Tank entrepreneur William Strange raises $1 million for sports-tracking business – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s been several months since Three65 Underwear founder William Strange graced national television screens, but the entrepreneur is celebrating a big milestone after raising $1 million in funding for his game-tracking GPS business.<\/p>\n

Strange, whose experience as a successful Shark Tank<\/em> contestant earlier this year shows he is no stranger to jumping in the deep end with his business ideas, officially launched GameTraka in January this year, although its parent company, Sports Performance Tracking has been operating for a number of years.<\/p>\n

GameTraka targets amateur sporting clubs and players and aims to capitalise on the popularity of sports fans who like to \u201cgamify\u201d people within a sporting match, Strange told SmartCompany<\/em> this morning.<\/p>\n

The GPS-based technology tracks on-field sports activity and, once complete, brings all the data back into a game tracker dashboard so the player and coach can analyse their stats post-match.<\/p>\n

The accolades have recently begun pouring in: Sports Performance Tracking recently won the inaugural Slush Down Under pitching event and Strange  will be flown to Helsinki in November to present the technology to over 15,000 tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.<\/p>\n

Strange told SmartCompany<\/em> the idea for Sports Performance Tracking began a few years ago, and the target market is 14 to 40-year-olds who \u201cplay every weekend in registered sport\u201d.<\/p>\n

He says the wearable GPS technology started generating \u201cworldwide interest\u201d a few years ago and he set out to partner with people to build the software and hardware.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith GPS product, we believe we\u2019re one of two in the world focusing on sub-elite market,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Strange is looking to globally grow the business, citing the estimated 1.8 million players of AFL, soccer, hockey and rugby in Australia and a potential global market of 300 million users globally.<\/p>\n

Strange says Tony Gandel of Gandel Invest and Brady Scanlon of Alady Group took part in the recent round of funding, which saw Sports Performance Tracking raise close to the $ 1 million mark.<\/p>\n

He says the funding boost will allow the business to seek out new sales opportunities, saying a potential partnership with a major sports retailer is on the cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good, it gives us the capacity to go out and spend where we need to spend and go out and bolster our offering,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen bootstrapping the business for close to two years, it gets pretty tough; you need to make sure any marketing, advertising, sales spending has a really good return on investments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strange says the business\u2019 technology is now in 22 countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs of last night we picked up Germany,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Strange says his latest venture is \u201cslightly different\u201d to his subscription-based men\u2019s underwear business but the lessons from his two business ventures so far have been very similar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story is the same, you\u2019re trying to keep spending down but make sure revenue is up and the process is right,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Strange says Sports Performance Tracking is set to pick up speed quickly, with five new employees taken on in the past three weeks alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to get out into all the local clubs in Australia, but also pushing globally to get into US and Europe markets, as well as Asia,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely want to get out globally, this is designed for all sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really trying to make name for ourselves down here and then have ability to expand quickly with same product all around the world,\u201d Strange adds.<\/p>\n

Strange says he is confident in the product, with the feedback having been \u201cfantastic\u201d so far.<\/p>\n

He is basking in the knowledge that players from as young as 12 to 13 in Shepparton, Victoria to club rugby players in France are already using his GramTraka.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve only been around eight months,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on SmartCompany.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been several months since Three65 Underwear founder William Strange graced national television screens, but the entrepreneur is celebrating a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,13,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}