Written by Caroline Deisley, USC blog contributor
Name: Randy Flores
Resume: Founder of On Deck Digital
Sport at USC: Baseball
Caroline Deisley (CD): So, it seems like you got the idea for your startup from your experiences as a baseball player - at least, your original idea. When did you decide that this was something you could take from an athletic standpoint and turn into a business career?
Randy Flores (RF): You know what? It actually happened on campus at USC. The idea came when I was a graduate student specifically, in the 2013 season, when I was the assistant coach at USC. While I was recruiting, I was at all of these high school showcases and tournaments for baseball scattered across field after field. I'm watching these things with a notepad and see parents holding up their iPhones, iPads and their little camcorders and the video experience is stuck in the 90s. It doesn't match what I had access to in the major leagues. So, then that little idea and thought turned into something that just wouldn't leave my brain. I began embarking on finding out why that was so, and then just decided that if no one else was doing it let's see if I piece it together.
CD: Did you ever think while you were playing that this would be a career path you would follow or that you would one day start your own company?
RF: No, not at all. I have to give that credit for the encouragement to do it to the Senior Associate Athletic Director Mark Jackson. When I was on campus as a coach and in grad school, Mark Jackson asked me what I thought my career path would be. At the time I was in the uniform as a coach and I absolutely loved it - loved being a USC coach particularly. I still had another year of graduate school and I realized it was not certain if I would come back as assistant coach again next year. So, I had a decision to make on whether or not I should stay in the uniform as a coach and leave USC or stay at USC, finish my degree and find out what was next. Mark Jackson gave me the encouragement. I'll never forget this. He said, "Randy, use the experience while you're here on campus with the tremendous resources that are all around you, the network you have and the relationships that are on campus to execute a solution to a problem that you've encountered in your experience." I had never thought that way. It had never occurred to me to think that way - to think a bit out of the box. I went home that night and I started thinking of what problems I had experienced while in uniform as a player. Immediately, it came to me that a few months earlier I had experienced that pain point trying to recruit and get videos of recruits while also seeing parents struggle to get videos of their kids. It got me thinking..."I'm already in school. I'm not already in a typical nine to five work environment. Why don't I take this opportunity to tackle it and see if we can make a business out of it?"
CD: So, what was your first move? What does it take to start your own company?
RF: (chuckles) Ignorance. I don't know. It's competitive. It's just an idea when it's on the couch but it has a chance to be something when you take steps to execute. It really began by going around campus at USC and asking people if I could share what I had in mind. Because I was in graduate school, had a .edu in my email address, was a coach and had a track record as a major league player, the people on campus were kind enough to pick up the phone, to take a meeting in their office, to take my email and respond as I began a little bit of a research project on what it would take to try to tackle this. I can't do it by myself. Being in graduate school and being on campus at SC, the Trojan Family really came into effect because everyone was there to assist the process. It was just an amazing experience to live through and still is. My programmers now, my coders and technology officers are from USC. My seed capital for the business came from USC grads. Legal counsel as well were USC graduates. So, it really was the Trojan Family seeing that I was working and taking action steps and then meeting my action with their action and advice.
CD: That's so awesome that it started here at USC. How do you think that your two worlds have converged? It's obviously a business that's athletics based but now that you're off the field and not playing or coaching anymore, what are your experiences like in the business world?
RF: It really is almost a single-minded focus and purpose that athletes brought that transfers to something else. I was never a big prospect. I was a walk-on at USC. I wasn't a high school All-American nationally acclaimed, recruited athlete. I went into the minor leagues. I wasn't an elite prospect. I did not sign for a high bonus that had "can't miss" written on it. So, there was a path that was a process of improving and working my tail off and that I had to in order to have any chance at success. I think that mentality and that experience directly transferred to my experience here in the business world. There is no guarantee of success. Most start-ups already have failed in the time frame that we've been in existence. But, it doesn't happen on your own. It happens because of work, tenacity, some grit and single-minded focus. The other thing that really transfers over is the importance of a team. I'm not a coder. I don't program. I'm not an engineer. It would be idiotic of me to say this is what I did as an athlete and now I'm doing this in business and I just put together the skills I had in college...No, I didn't even touch an excel spreadsheet for 15 years while I was playing ball. Now to be in a space that is very co-mingled with baseball, I really, really am fortunate to have a great team and value, appreciate and encourage our team in tackling this.
CD: What was it like when you came back to grad school on campus going back to school after playing professional baseball?
RF: It was daunting. It really was. I was a late adopter of all technology. I was the last guy to hold on to a flip phone. I didn't think that texting had a chance. I was a late mover to smart phones so then to be on campus and in graduate school, it was the first time I had been in a structured office environment in 15 years. There's a lot of work. I worked during the day and school at night then you add coaching to that. I also have a wife and kids, so I was pretty overwhelmed at first. Funny story about that...I played in a World Series. I pitched in Game 7 to get to the World Series and I've never been more nervous in my life at that moment until the first day in the athletic department I was assisting the Student Athlete Academic Services center for John Mosbach and Magdi El Shahawy. Well, I'm in John's office and he is sitting down on my first day eating a sandwich and he asks me Randy, can you just take an attempt at formatting correctly my Excel calendar? I start banging on the thing like a monkey, hitting stuff and I'm looking over my shoulder, mumbling and stalling. I'm acting as if I'm really giving it a good research, but it's because I had no idea what I'm doing. John steps out of the office and he doesn't come back. I'm telling you that to center the line that I needed to center I literally used the space bar to do it. I don't even know if that makes sense to you but I didn't even know to hit the icon to center the document. It was the most nervous I had ever been. I turned in my terribly formatted calendar that looked like it had been done by a toddler and I said I'm sorry I have to be honest I haven't used Excel in 15 years. It was just a little taste at how much I was going to have to learn quickly if I was going to drown under the weight of my incompetence.
CD: So, what is the World Series equivalent of the start-up world?
RF: I don't think that there will ever be an answer for that and that's a scary thing that athletes often face is always trying to match the feeling they had in their sport - the adrenaline, the sense of accomplishment, the teamwork and camaraderie that's truly unique to that time and place in your life. Forgive me if that's not the standard answer, but I don't think anything else is like that. I don't think I will ever match the feeling of running around like a kid at recess dogpiling on grown men because we had just won a baseball game. I can say that there is tremendous satisfaction out of a team coming together to tackle something that hadn't been tackled before and is something that we could be proud of and continue to be proud of. Every day we're stretched. We're stretching ourselves, we're stretching our capabilities, we're learning. Now, that is what most matches my athletic experience is that challenge.
CD: So, what's next?
RF: I would say it is to continue to contend for our space here. What's next immediately is we covered and had a partnership with the Cape Cod Summer League - the nation's best collegiate baseball players play there. We were there for a year and from that experience major league teams are actually buying and accessing that video data integration solution that we provided of covering 200 games of that entire league. Next, it's been taking that experience and seeing how to best execute that platform for the masses that play high school baseball and softball and even younger. There's been developmental steps all fall and will continue all winter in fine-tuning our platform so that not just the elite collegiate player and the elite major league player have video data integration but that everyone who's family passion and hard-earned money goes into their sports participation can have a video experience that matches it.
