Stuart was Co-founder and CEO of hoolah, the buy-now-pay-later company that anticipated the growth in the consumer spending sector to build first-mover advantage in Asia. hoolah exited to Shopback in 2021. Prior to that Stuart had over 20 years of experience in industries ranging from telecoms to payments to eCommerce across Europe, Asia and Australasia. Originally from the UK, Stuart held leadership roles within both large enterprises and start-ups - including companies such as Verizon, Vodafone and Worldpay. Now he is embarking on startup number 2 and this time in the sports industry with heros.

heroes is a membership club platform enabling athletes and fans to connect, inspire and invest in each other. The mission is to solve the unsolved issue of athlete earning, living and maximising true value. By building a community around the athletes, connecting and enabling fan engagement and rewards as well as bring brands to engage the athletes and fans, we aim to create a new ecosystem for the ever growing sports industry. Borrowing from the Patreon model - its time to level the playing field in sport, enable athletes from all sports, career stages, backgrounds and countries to earn & experience a career and achieve their dreams. 

➡️ Timestamps

0:00 - Intro

0:39 - Stuart's background

4:19 - Recognising a startup opportunity 

7:34 - Competing against incumbents

9:38 - Experience and advice around being acquired

14:27 - Establishing relationships with potential acquirers

17:15 - Heros origin story

25:46 - How Heros works for athletes

31:24 - The Heros MVP

33:00 - Acquiring athletes to Heros

35:12 - Working with sports industry insiders

36:30 - How Heros acquires fans / consumers39:03 - The Heros team

40:51 - Financing

42:00 - Stuart’s call-to-action it’s

43:37 - Advising startups

48:21 - Top 3 pieces of advice for early-stage startup founders

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ℹ️ Guest & Company info

🚀 Startup - Heros

🌐  Startup's site - https://www.heros.xyz/

🗂️ Crunchbase - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/heros-aee8

🧑‍💻 Founder - Stuart Thornton

💼 Founder's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartjthornton

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