We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andre Spivey a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Andre, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Has Covid resulted in any major changes to your business model?
My cyber security SecNetX company was affected by covid-19 in that many small business were shrinking their budget. A few of my clients temporarily went out of business. The minor league professional basketball team suffered when fans were no longer allowed in gyms, and later less fans were allowed due to spacing which means we sold less tickets. We adjusted by relying on more on streaming games, showing more highlights and ad sales.
Andre, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I have been interested in engineering and basketball since I was 7 years old. Mainly inspired by a character on the show A Different World Dwayne Dwayne who was an engineering student. I started SecNetX do that to consult small businesses on compliance and security believing they need the same level of service is larger business, but with more reasonable pricing. Loving sports and being in a city like Tampa Bay where thr teams are winning inspired to me to take my love for basketball and purchase a team in the ABA hopefully helping players in following the success of Dr. J and other legends and providing family entertainment.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
I initially took some profits made from technology ventures and money madd from day job and bootstrapped my professional basketball team. Initially fees to the league along with marketing,uniforms, location leasing were in thr tens of thousands of dollars making it very challenging.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
During our first season the team was low on funding so travel games were tough. We would contact local hotels in each city seeking to partner with them for discounts. This got us through the regular season and we won the division championship our first season. As a brand new start-up team we went through the roughest time yet succeeded.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.813furynation.com
- Instagram: @813fury
- Facebook: @813fury
Image Credits
N/A