Starters LIVE with Milton Lee

CEO of Keemotion. Formerly: GM — Minor League, Brooklyn Nets

Starters
Starters

--

This is a recap from our Live Chat with Milton Lee on Starters.co.

Milton Lee is the CEO of Keemotion, the fully automated video production ecosystem producing live events in 10 countries around the world. Clients and partners include the Golden State Warriors, Villanova Wildcats, Buffalo Sabres, ESPN, Fox Sports and Intel. Keemotion recently closed their Series A round with notable investors, David Stern, David Blitzer (Co-owner of the Philadelphia 76'ers), Jason Levien (Managing owner of DC United) and the LA Dodger’s.

He was the lead NBA advisor to Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Group on their investments in the Brooklyn Nets and Barclay’s Center. He served on the board of directors of the Nets and Barclay’s Center, and was the vice president and a director at Onexim Sports & Entertainment (Prokhorov’s holding company) until October, 2015.

Hi Guys!!! Psyched to be here! Let’s kick things off… Before I get started on the Q&A, I’ll give a little background on Keemotion.

Keemotion: Change the way you see the game… That’s what we’re out to do. Change the way live sporting events are video’ed and produced. And bringing alot more professional level content to you, the viewers through our automated technology.

Currently operating in 10 countries around the world. We produce 6 entire professional basketball leagues in Europe. And just signed up our 9th NBA team!

Hi Milton — do you feel like the NBA is ahead of the other 3 major North American leagues when it comes to adoption of cutting-edge tech like Keemotion, SportVU, etc.?

Historically baseball has been ahead of everyone when it comes to data and analytics. That’s because a baseball game is a series of 1–1 confrontations with a stop and end point. So there was just a plethora of data dating back 100years. The 3 other major sports had more people influencing single outcomes and except for football didn’t have stoppage in play — so collecting the data was much more challenging. With the advent of computer vision like Keemotion or SportVu, you are able to capture so much more data than we were just a few years ago. So now, with the capability of collecting this data — it seems the NBA has leaned forward the most of any sports league in taking advantage of cutting edge technology.

Hey Milton. A group of my friends are using Apple’s ARKit to develop several sports specific AR prototypes using live video, game mechanics, etc. How would you suggest they introduce their prototypes to broadcasters or sports teams when they have no connections? Thanks!

Good question! This is the challenge we face every day. While it’s so obvious (to us Keemotion ) that we add so much value, for some of the broadcasters or sports team — they are often inundated with new technologies and sometimes under-informed as to which solutions are best. My advice, and what we try to execute is you have to hit a couple singles. What level that is — is what the market will bear. You don’t have to go for the pros. If your friends have a value-add technology, someone will try the technology out. And once you have a few test cases, you can take it upstream to higher levels. And btw — you’d be surprised how many of these teams talk to each other both upstream and downstream. If you’re adding value — word gets around!

Congrats again on the recent announcement and all of the early success. With that, whats next for the company, how do you see the company expanding and what is the focus over the next few months?

Though we’ve had a lot of great press lately — the mission remains the same: Enable the content owners to create really high quality content at an affordable cost, thereby unlocking the value of all sports events around the world. With that as the end game, we’re constantly trying to improve our technology while keeping the costs low. We’re expanding into other sports with great partners like hockey and the Buffalo Sabres and will soon be making waves outdoors. I think A.I. is the biggest question mark — how much of an impact will it have on our development. Nobody knows the answer — but I’m optimistic and excited! I’m convinced it will eventually lead us outside of sports.

What is one thing you’ve learned over the past year?

One thing I learned over the past year and re-learn every year is to focus on the signal and not the noise. When I was on Wall Street, I loved following a famed investor named Jim Rogers. He was George Soros partner when they started the Soros fund. He had an amazing ability to break complex issues down into simple black and white using common sense. One of his main points was to disregard “the noise”. The noise he was referring to was the ups and downs of the markets on a day to day basis. You have to focus on the long term b/c short term volatility is inevitable. I think in tech in general and in sports tech specifically there is so much “noise”. What I try to re-learn and tell my team to do is disregard the noise and stay the course. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Hey Milton, thanks so much for taking the time and congrats on the recent news! I’m curious to get your thoughts on the Dodgers Accelerator and the benefit you guys got from participating. Any suggestions or recommendations for other startups interested in participating?

Dodgers Accelerator with R/GA was really an incredible experience. 2 world class organizations that have brought so much to our business.

Dodgers Accelerator — was a 3month process which literally accelerated our ability to get off the ground. The first day they had Peter Guber speak to us. He’s the CEO of Mandalay Entertainment (owned a bunch of minor league baseball teams), co-owner of the Golden State Warriors and part-owner of the Dodger’s. Not to mention being one of the most influential Hollywood producers of the 80’s and 90’s. The first thing he asked was, “Do you know what the most important part of a rocketships trajectory to/from outer space?” He said it’s the first 5seconds. Getting that thing off the ground. Getting enough acceleration for it to complete it’s journey. That’s the toughest part. And for many startups it’s the same thing. He said Dodgers Accelerator was here to help lift us through those 5 seconds! What a great analogy!

I’d highly recommend participating in the Dodgers Accelerator . Know that it’s a very competitive process. Our year, Keemotion and ShotTracker were 2 of 5 companies chosen out of 750 from countries all over the world.

There were alot of other benefits from participating. Both R/GA and Dodgers Accelerator were terrific at constantly introducing us to potential business partners or potential investors.

R/GA re-worked our brand. And their presentation guru, David Isaacs — really buttoned up our presentations and my pitch. He was terrific.

One of the most useful exercises was an addressable market study and what strategic path we should continue to go down. The information they downloaded on us was very fruitful and basically validated what we were already doing. A great feeling!

What are some things sports leagues could do better to help facilitate innovation in their sport aside from just hosting the odd sports hackathon tournament?

As with progress in any field you need 2 things. 1) Innovators and 2) Open-mindedness. I think the sports tech field has shown a tremendous amount of innovators out there. There’s alot of cool stuff being developed!!! What professional sports leagues and teams have not historically been great at is being open-minded. Did you see Moneyball? That dynamic of old-school and new-school was real! And to a lesser degree it still exists, and will always exist. Hopefully innovators like Keemotion will make teams much more efficient, will lead to more wins and will save everyone budgeting. So we will become a no-brainer solution!

Hi Milton, thanks so much for joining us. I’m curious to know — what is one book (or piece of resource) which you have gifted the most to friends and/or industry peers.

One of the books I like to give is called “Risk/Reward. Why intelligent leaps and daring choices are the best career moves you can make.”

I think alot of us are searching for fulfillment in the one thing we will spend more time doing than anything else in our lives, ex-sleep. That’s work. And alot of people get frustrated and demotivated because they’re not living up to their potential. This book identifies the 4 different occupational types. 1) Pioneers, 2) Thinkers, 3) Defenders and 4) Drifters. The minute I picked this book up, I knew I fit in the Pioneer category — and my career history all made sense.

I spent 9 years in finance, 6 years as a ‘solopreneur’, 5 years with the Brooklyn Nets and ownership and now the last 2 years as a tech CEO… and I’d imagine I’ll have a few other iterations down the line. I was a perfect fit under the “Pioneer” definition. Or at least I thought I was…

That’s quite the journey. What were some underrated traits or skill-sets that you learned while in your finance role that have helped you in your role as a tech CEO today?

I reach back to my experiences on Wall Street all the time. First of all, most large Wall Street companies were public, so the protocol and compliance standards were very high. When you’re working on your own as a ‘solopreneur’ or working for a small business, which is what an NBA team is, sometimes the protocol may not be as strict. So that experience on Wall Street has given me a clear vision of one of the foundations of our business. Another thing I learned on Wall Street was to be about the bottom line. If something isn’t additive to the bottom line, then in the long term it will not exist or you will not exist. That “something” could be an employee, a consultant, a software service, a process that’s being instituted, etc. At some point, the promise of that “something” has to effect the bottom line in a positive manner. But I think the biggest take away I learned was the intensity and work ethic needed to compete and be successful in very high stakes environments. On Wall Street, you were going up against some of the best and brightest every day. People that ate nails for breakfast, that could stay up all night on spreadsheets and models — the competitive bar was very high.

And it was those experiences in finance, as a ‘solopreneur’ and being in charge of technology and analytics at the Brooklyn Nets that prepared me for my role today in an incredibly exciting and challenging role! I wish I could say I planned it, but…

Hey Milton, congrats on everything so far — sounds like Keemotion has been crushing it. Brizi is also a camera based sports tech startup (but focused on the fans!) and I was wondering how you approached developing your business model when selling to teams. We want to stricture it in a way that is most appealing to the teams while also covering our hardware costs if possible. Would love to hear how you guys did this!

That’s a debate we regularly have. Where is the sweet spot between pricing and market share? All I can say is, it’s an art, not a science — and something everyone struggles with…

Check out all of our upcoming Starters Live Chats 👇

--

--

A community of #sportstech innovators. Join now at http://starters.co and help us shape the future of sports! Follow @StartersBot #WeAreStarters