Rudd entrepreneur wins MIT competition for sport analysis

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

Andy Campbell grew up in Rudd and has used sports analytics to create a nationally recognized start-up.

Impakt Sports, Campbell’s business, is the winner of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC) 2017 Trade Show that is held in Boston, Massachusetts.

SSAC start-up competition is one of the largest sports analytics competitions in the world.

“It is a huge accelerator for our business, just to be accepted,” Campbell said. “That was a pretty big honor.”

The competition had a record number of applicants this year, Campbell said.

“We gave our pitch and it did go really well. We put a lot of prep into it,” Campbell said. “It sunk in about 30 minutes later (after winning), we’ve got to put together a whole PR scheme to really take advantage of this.”

Impakt Sports isn’t hurting for clients, but it is are in need of investors, Campbell said.

“We already have almost too many college and NFL teams lined up to service them. What we need is investment dollars,” Campbell said.

Impakt specializes in football analytics, but is planning to branch out to other sports.

Sports have always been important to Campbell. He was involved at Rockford High School, and now he’s been able to swing that into sport analytics business that helps football coaches around the country.

While in high school Campbell was heavily involved in sports, playing four years of basketball and football, and being involved in baseball and track.

There were a lot of different routes Campbell went on prior to going to entrepreneurship.

“No path is ever straight. When I left North Iowa to go to college… I went to the University of Iowa,” Campbell said.

He credits a Mr. Keith, his high school chemistry teacher for inspiring him to go into chemical engineering at the University of Iowa, Campbell said.

While going through the chemical engineering program at the University of Iowa Campbell met his wife, he said.

“As I got at Iowa I missed coaching, I missed the sports aspect, really the coaching aspect of working with other people,” Campbell said. “I picked up a job as a middle school coach at Southeast Junior High in Iowa City.”

He played pick up ball in his spare time with a team of women and he cleaned house against their opponents, Campbell said.

It was during that time that Campbell realized that there might be a path professionally for him with athletics, he said.

Campbell also used his chemical engineering degree and worked for General Mills out of the state.

“I really missed working with people,” Campbell said.

Sports continued to be important to Campbell even as he returned to the University of Iowa for his MBA.

Campbell attributes the athletic atmosphere of Rudd Rockford Marble Rock with his enthusiasm for sports.

“My parents were big advocates of it, being active and being healthy,” Campbell said. “I love the athletic side of things.”

Campbell became a business management and marketing professor at Central College and coached women’s basketball there.

“I was kind of a duel professor and entrepreneur for a couple of years,” Campbell said.

While Campbell was at Central he would take a lot of students interested in sports management under his wing and help them with internships and experience, he said.

During Campbell’s time at Central as a professor, and shortly after becoming a father for the first time, one of his friends from the MBA program at the University of Iowa called him for advice on marketing to coaches.

His friend was Zac Quistan, CEO of Impakt Sports, and that advice and discussion morphed into his current business.

Campbell is the director of marketing for Impakt Sports.

Campbell has been working at Impakt since 2014, and working there full-time since spring on 2016.

During the time Impakt was starting Campbell was able to juggle being at Central with his business.

“It became very apparent this last spring — we started having meetings with Stanford, the Raiders — and the marketing piece of this was going to demand a lot more of my attention,” Campbell said. “So I decided to roll the dice and give this (Impakt) a shot.”

Impakt works with coaches at all levels, including high school to help develop analytics for football and apply them to practice planning and scout card creation, Campbell said.

“We decided to go premium level first. It helps because if you sell to Jacksonville, to Sanford, (the University of) Iowa it’s a whole lot easier making that sale to a high school coach if you’re already working with those big dogs,” Campbell said.

Chad Harbaugh of Clayton Ridge football has gotten in touch with Campbell to incorporate Impakt sports.

“He reached out to us on Twitter a while ago,” Campbell said.

Campbell said he would be interested in working with some of the schools from where he came from.

“There are certainly programs up in the Floyd County area that we would love to work with in the long term,” Campbell said. “We’ve got a sweet spot for Iowa.”