Today we’d like to introduce you to Troy Jones.
Hi Troy, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
This is an interesting question for me because I would have answered it differently last year. As I reflect, I realize it all started for me in my senior year of college. While I did not have plans to become a Founder or CEO, I did have a passion to impact the sport I loved in some type of way. My senior year of college is when I realized that I was not going to achieve my lifelong dream of becoming an NFL Quarterback. The quarterback in front of me was granted a 6th-year of eligibility, and he was the leading passer in the country. As a result, I started thinking of ways that impact sports by typing up an idea I had for a football app that could help athletes get better. Fast forward 3 years from that moment, I would be partnering with two gentlemen I met at a football camp to bring that idea to life through mixed reality. We built a training application that allowed NFL teams to recreate plays from the player tracking data that is captured on game days. Our first client was the Baltimore Ravens, and once that happened, I decided to commit to this opportunity full-time. I truly did not expect to become a CEO, I thought it was in the cards one day, but not when I was 27 years old. It was my Co-Founder, Andrew Hawkins, who believed in me and told me that I should do it. I am forever grateful for his faith in me, as it has played a major role in where I am today.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I would argue that the journey to build a company or to success in general is never a “smooth” road. When you are attempting to accomplish something that you’ve never done, there’s going to be growing pains. Add emerging technology and building a business in sport and entertainment, you get a lot of highs and lows. I think the key is to always look at things out of a “glass half full” lens and to find the opportunity to get better whenever things are necessarily going your way. An example of that for me is when it was time to raise money from venture capitalists. We were told no more times than I can count, which can lead to you questioning if you are out of your mind for trying to execute your dream. It took a significant amount of self-work to not internalize those no’s and to only extract the why behind the nos. This helped us continue to refine our pitch so our message would become more clear and get ahead of the questions people had coming into our meetings.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
StatusPRO is an immersive entertainment company that leverages augmented and virtual reality (XR) to create first-person sports experiences. Our flagship product, NFL PRO ERA, was the first ever fully licensed sports product in VR and has amassed over 1.1 million customers in 15 months. In layman’s terms, we are fulfilling the fantasy of every sports fan and finally showing people what it’s like to be their favorite athlete. We have raised capital from the best VCs in the world, like Google Ventures, Greycroft, KB Partners, Verizon Ventures, and more… Our company prides itself on our diversity, being our competitive advantage and doing our best to show that innovation can come from anyone. Regardless of their background. My co-founder and I are two former athletes who did not have a traditional background in technology or gaming, yet we are building a business that has the chance to change gaming and entertainment forever, and that helps us recognize that this opportunity is bigger than us as individuals.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out.
Embrace the discomfort that comes with this journey. As a former athlete, I overuse sports analogies, but it’s kind of like running sprints for the first time. You feel your body and your mind telling you to stop because you won’t make it to the end. Your legs are heavy, you can’t catch your breath, ALL signs scream to shut it down… But when you keep going, you not only realize you can finish, but the sprints become easier and easier the more you do them. The entrepreneurial journey is similar. It’s one of the hardest experiences you will ever have. The discipline, the self-work, the scrutiny of your product, you’re challenged in so many ways, but the goal is to build the skills necessary that prepares you for the day when you have hundreds of employees and millions of customers. It’s supposed to be hard; people are supposed to doubt you. I genuinely believe if it isn’t, then that should be a larger concern.
Pricing:
- You can play NFL PRO ERA on Meta Quest platform along with PSVR. The game retails for $29.99! Please go play and tag NFLPROERA on social media!
Contact Info:
- Website: status.pro
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/status.pro
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/troy-jones-jr-mba-582b60163/
