We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt Wray. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt below.

Matt, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

My business partner, Mike Palumbo, and I had spent the last 10 years in the youth/travel sports industry working on pretty much every aspect of the market. A problem that consistently came up was parents of the athletes were calling us multiple times a week saying “The team we are playing for right now is the wrong fit for us, and we are looking to leave. Do you guys know where we could play next? We are looking for X,Y.&Z.” After the problem was hitting us in the face 100 times, we realized there was no website or platform where information on these teams existed, unlike the ones that exist for other industries such as Yelp, Carvana, etc. We actually drew up the idea on a random Thursday night when we were having a few beers at a sports bar, and we mapped out the idea on the back of the bar menu. We immediately left the bar and went back to the offices we were working for at the time and kept whiteboarding the idea till about 5AM. From there, it was putting together what we call a “brain dump” business plan. We then started going to parents in the industry and asking if our idea would be viable and if they would use it. We then had a pitch deck ready. This all took about a week and a half since drawing it on the back of the menu, and we quit our jobs and chased this idea full time. This was in January of 2021, and I was a senior in college. We spent February and April raising a pre-seed fundraising round, as well as finding a software development company outsource the work. Software development started in April with a firm based in Indian, and by late June we launched. It all happened extremely quickly, but we knew that there was an overwhelming need for a platform to exist in this market. As we always say to people starting a company, you are in complete control during the ideation and creation phase, but once its live, its in the markets hands.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA and grew up playing and being involved in sports. A funny anecdote I always tell is my business career started very young (perks of always looking older than I am). My professional career started when I was 13 years old:

Starting as an Events Director at NXTLevel Events in 2014, I was exposed to every level of travel sports there was from managing events and teams. For 3 years, the company was running events with 70+ teams per weekend in baseball and softball tournaments, managing a team of 15 employees. In 2017, I was brought on full time for the then-startup Philadelphia Baseball Training as the Director of Special Events. I managed the events division from top to bottom, including sales, operations, customer service, and managed a staff of 20+ employees during my tenure. The events division grew over 400% in my time with the company, as well as the formation of strategic partnerships with companies such as Dicks Sporting Goods, The Hamels Foundation, and Hitrax. I also created the company’s media division, in which I was the host of podcast “Beyond the Bell” where pro-athletes, sports media personalities, and college athletes were interviewed.

In 2021, I graduated from Saint Joseph’s University and co-founded LENZ, which was the first ever platform that allowed parents to rate their experience with their travel sports teams and events they played in. LENZ quickly caught onto local and regional markets, with over 4000 site users across multiple sports, leading to recognition as one of “Philadelphia’s Top Innovators Under 25” by Philadelphia Business Journal.

I also spent the next 3 years in the Philadelphia 76ers front office, with the NBA ownership group Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment within their sales department before leaving to run LENZ full time in 2024.

Most recently, LENZ has launched 3 new companies under it’s umbrella. LENZ Consulting is a social media and marketing firm for sports companies. LENZ Events is a regional youth sports events provider, primarily in baseball. LENZ Merchandise is a sports apparel provider that offers fully customizable gear for sports organization’s players, coaches, and parents.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I’d say that the main theme of the journey for LENZ could be summed up with the word “Pivot”. The idea we had for the platform 3 years ago had initially gotten really good traction the first 6 months in market. However, even though we were getting a high amount of users on the site, the travel sports organizations were not buying in because they did not want to be exposed for having a “bad product”. The user count all of the sudden began to plateau, and Mike and I were left in a position to try and make a change. We looked at the overall industry and our platform, and we wanted to keep our main mission the same: how can we continue to improve the overall experience of travel sports and keep athletes playing longer. This, after a year and a half of our original idea in market, was our big pivot. We spoke to some really good mentors, listened to our customers, and restructured everything. The pivot we rolled out was called LENZ Sports Group, which on top of the tech side has 3 business
that works directly with athletes and travel sports organizations: LENZ Consulting is a social media and marketing firm for sports companies. LENZ Events is a regional youth sports events provider, primarily in baseball. LENZ Merchandise is a sports apparel provider that offers fully customizable gear for sports organization’s players, coaches, and parents.

A massive lesson I learned in entrepreneurship is putting your ego aside when your original idea isn’t working. We all start with that original idea, and we have that vision that it will be a billion dollar idea and will be a perfect fit. The best founders listen to their customers, make the necessary changes, and move quickly without their ego getting in the way.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I’d say for any young professional starting their career, in any market, the best way to build your reputation is to do these 3 things:

1) Network your A** off: Curiosity will lead you down many great paths. Especially when you are younger, people who are more experienced and successful do want to help you. Reach out to people, be curious, want to learn. Find ways to provide value for them without expecting anything in return. The stronger these relationships are will be more valuable to you then any education or salary can get you.

2) Just Be Involved: Any opportunity you get to do a job, go to an event, meet a new person in the industry, say yes. There have been so many times where I was asked to volunteer, do an intro call, or work some event that maybe was not ideal, but it got me in front of really influential people, and my reputation grew from that as being someone who hustled and could be relied on. Find every way possible to be involved and help people.

3) Authentically Tell Your Story: Whether it’s introducing yourself, your LinkedIn presence, or even situations like interviews, be a really good story teller of your authentic self brand. Be vocal of what your why is too. The more people know your true passion and what you are chasing, the more people gravitate towards wanting to be involved with it. You’re why is the best reputation you can have for yourself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lenzsportsgroup.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-wray-252331172/

Image Credits

All of our photography and marketing is done in-house from our team, Luke Kania Head of Marketing.