A Baseball Startup with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel

Oxide and Friends · 17 Apr 2024 · 1h 13m · Episode 11

What this episode covers

Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel, founders of the Oakland Ballers, explain how they launched a new independent baseball team in response to the Oakland Athletics' departure. They discuss the strategic decision to join the Pioneer League, the logistical challenge of launching two teams (the Ballers and the Yolo High Wheelers) to meet league requirements, and their focus on community engagement and historical reverence. The conversation highlights their innovative approach to branding, player recruitment, and stadium development at Rimondi Park.

Mentioned

Companies
Oaklandish, BART
Products
Oakland Ballers, Yolo High Wheelers, Oakland Athletics
Also
Pioneer League, Rimondi Park, Dustin Canelan, JT Snow, Don Wakamatsu, Kelsey Whitmore, Laney College

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • How I Built This · 1h 19m

    Strava: Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath

    Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath, co-founders of Strava, recount their journey from a failed 1995 attempt to build a 'virtual locker room' for athletes to the successful launch of Strava in 2009. They detail their pivot to enterprise email software (Kana), which led to a successful IPO, and their eventual return to their original passion project targeting cyclists with GPS data. The episode highlights their strategic decision to focus on a niche audience, the friction of early hardware dependencies like Garmin devices, and the personal challenges that shaped their leadership roles, including Gainey’s health issues and Horvath’s wife’s cancer diagnosis.

  • How I Built This · 1h 28m

    Dude Perfect: Cory Cotton and Tyler Toney

    Cory Cotton and Tyler Toney, co-founders of the entertainment brand Dude Perfect, recount how a backyard basketball bet at Texas A&M led to their first viral YouTube video. They detail the grueling early years of balancing full-time jobs with weekly cross-Texas drives to film trick shots, culminating in a pivotal moment where Cory’s health broke down from exhaustion. The group eventually quit their day jobs in 2014 to professionalize the business, securing major sponsorships like GMC and Nerf to build a multi-platform media empire.

  • How I Built This · 59m

    EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black

    Susan Griffin-Black and Brad Black, founders of EO Products, explain how a chance encounter with essential oils in London inspired them to build a $50 million natural body care company without venture capital. They detail their scrappy early years, including manufacturing bath salts in a garage and securing a pivotal order from Bloomingdale's that led to the brand name 'EO'. The episode covers their strategic decision to avoid VC funding to protect product integrity, their divorce in 2007, and their unique decision to remain business partners. They also discuss launching the 'everyone' brand to enter mass retail channels like Walgreens and Walmart.

  • How I Built This · 40m

    Zumba: Beto Perez & Alberto Perlman (January, 2017)

    Beto Perez and Alberto Perlman, co-founders of Zumba, recount how a music mix-up in Colombia led to a fitness phenomenon, eventually partnering with Alberto Aguillon to scale the brand in the US. They detail the struggle to secure initial funding after 9/11, the creative workaround of using phonetic scripts for Beto’s infomercial, and the pivotal launch of the Zumba Instructor Network which generated immediate revenue. The episode highlights their strategic pivot to licensing music from major artists like Pitbull, turning Zumba into a global marketing platform for Latin and pop music while maintaining a grassroots community focus.

  • How I Built This · 1h 05m

    Outdoor Voices: Tyler Haney

    Tyler Haney, founder of Outdoor Voices, explains how she identified a gap in the saturated athletic wear market for non-competitive athletes and launched a brand centered on 'play' and community. She details her bootstrapped journey from sketching prototypes in her apartment to securing a $500,000 order from J. Crew, which forced her to raise capital and quit her job to fulfill the production. Haney describes her unconventional fundraising strategy of sending product to female partners of male investors, leading to a seed round from General Catalyst and subsequent scaling into retail and direct-to-consumer channels.

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by Oxide and Friends. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.