Ep. 157 - Founding a Tech Startup with Diane Bloodworth

Diane Bloodworth has driven multiple tech ventures across a variety of products. Join us as Diane shares her experience working and succeeding in tech and gives her advice to find your own success.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to the You Are Techie podcast,
episode 157.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to the You Are Techie podcast, where it's
all about growing in your techso you can find the tech job of
your dreams.
And now your host technologylearning coach, Ellen Tomi.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
So many moms returning to work have asked me
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I can't wait to see you there.
Diane Bloodworth is the founderand c e O of S Stout Smartt
predictive analytics platformthat helps college football
coaches efficiently findrecruits that fit and stay in
their program.
She has 25 years of experiencein the technology industry,
including a successful startuplaunch and acquisition.

(01:58):
And she has in-depth experiencein analytics, software
development, IT operation andprocess improvement through her
past rules.
At I b Diane is a thought leaderin sports analytics and frequent
speaker on the topic.
She graduated with anundergraduate degree from the
University of Georgia Go Dogs.
And Angie has an IBA from Miami.

(02:18):
Diane lives in Atlanta with herdog, absolutely named Scout.
Diane, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you Ellen.
And, and thanks for the GoDogplug.
Much appreciate it.
I mean, I'd got'em here.
They win a nationalchampionship, I'm getting
converted, you know, that's theway it Absolutely.
Well, let's dive in and talkabout scout Smart.

(02:40):
So I've talked about this in mypodcast before.
I am actually one of those rarefemales who has played tackle
football.
So like to see a female c e O inthis role of football analytics
is so cool.
I just, I love it.
But why did you become thefounder and, and what drove you
to start outsmart?
Yeah, excellent.
Yeah, and, and I love yourbackground with that, Ella,

(03:02):
you're, you're one of the fewwomen I met who has played a
little tackle football, sothat's great.
But kind of an interestingstory, when I was at the
University of Miami doing my b a, working for I B M at the time,
doing some things in expertsystems, I got paired with the
star running back on one oftheir national championship
teams.
Uh, and this was during thenineties.

(03:23):
So, you know, thinking aboutusing technology and data in
sports was just kind of crazytalk.
But anyway, we developed abusiness plan in a class on
entrepreneurship where we wouldpredict the opponent's strategy
using an expert system andtendencies that we had collected

(03:43):
about that opponent.
And that idea just kind of stuckwith me.
It was way too early to doanything.
I did start in the early twothousands talking to coaches,
they still weren't quite ready,did a prototype, went out and
talked to some, they said,listen, we need help in
recruiting.
It's not game planning.
We are looking at, we need helpin recruiting.
And that's when I did kind of apivot and really started looking

(04:06):
at Scout Smart and providing thepredictive recruiting analytics.
And one thing that helped us was, uh, that the performance
analytics started to come outthe wearable technology.
And so the coaches started usingmore data and they became more
receptive to looking atrecruiting in a little different
way.

(04:27):
Interesting.
Have you always been a footballfan?
Always been a football fan.
Grew up in rural Georgia.
So kind of the given,it's like you're raised that
way, right?
That's the part of the, part ofthe growth plans to introduce
you and and expose you to a lotof football.
So that's so fun.
Can you give them a high level,tell us a little bit more in

(04:49):
detail.
What does Scouts smart do andthen how does it help your
customer?
Yeah, certainly.
So what we do is we collect asmany data points on a recruit as
we can.
We have over 75,000 recruits inour database.
We look at their performance,their stats, we compare them to
other players in that position.

(05:10):
We look at their academics, wegive them a score on their
academics and then we workedwith the N F L Scout to also
look at the skills for eachposition and which skills are
the best predictors ofperformance.
And so we also have a skillsanalysis as well.
All of this makes up a fit scorethat the college coaches can

(05:31):
customize.
Ooh, wow.
Fascinating.
That's so interesting.
And so from a coach'sperspective, they're finding the
right players for their program,but why should a player, why
should an athlete sign up forScout Smart and then also walk
us through how they do that?
Yes, certainly you're right.

(05:51):
We really wanna help thosecoaches filter through all those
high school players that are outthere and really hone in on the
guys that are gonna win in theirprogram.
We sell to the college program,so it is free for a recruit to
be in our database.
And so we feel like, hey, thisis an opportunity for them to
create a profile.
We have a mobile app they candownload web app where they can

(06:12):
create their profile.
We'll work with their highschool coach if their high
school coach would like to sendus data.
And then we'd like to give theseguys a shout out on Twitter.
We've had a couple of guys gettheir first D one offer just
when we gave'em a shout out onour Twitter account.
We also send emails to about 300coaches a week highlighting

(06:33):
certain recruits and this givesthem, you know, some really
great attention as well.
So for, to the recruit, hey,it's a great way to increase
your exposure at no cost.
Excellent.
Okay, let's shift away fromfootball a little bit and let's
talk tech.
What technical skills do youfeel have helped you the most in
your career?

(06:54):
I think being able to talk toboth people in the business and
in the development or technologyside of things.
So I think having that abilityto cross over.
Now what that means sometimes isI don't quite have the depth of
the, you know, a a hardcoredeveloper in terms of skills,
but I understand what they'redoing and it really helps me

(07:18):
translate what I need to provideto a user, to the developers.
I think the other thing it doesis just managing technical
projects has been something Iprobably have managed a hundred
technical projects and you just,you learn a lot how to, what a
pain with.
Cuz technology, what I've talkedabout this technology could be a

(07:40):
little messy.
So I'm, I, there's been a lot oflessons learned and, and I still
make mistakes sometimes, but Ireally think it helped me really
learn how to deliver a technicalproject within the budget and
within the expectations of the,of the client or the user.
Okay.
So that's a great seguewaybecause, so you mean you're,

(08:03):
you're a tech founder, but Iwould love to know, do you
consider yourself techy?
Why or why not?
I consider myself techy in thatI understand quite a bit about
what has to help and, and thedevelopment process.
I think it makes me realisticabout what we can do and what we
can't do.
And it helps me really managethe development of efforts.

(08:25):
So yeah, I would have to say I'mtechy.
I'm not the person that's gonnago write off the code.
So, you know, kind of, that'skind of a different level of, of
techy.
Okay, that's super interesting.
So you kind of caveated, but, sowhat factors have been the most
impactful in your decision tostart a company?
And I'd love for you to touch ontoo the fact that it's a tech

(08:47):
company and then why now?
Certainly.
So right outta college I went towork for I B M and worked in a
technical group.
So that really wasn't my plan.
And in fact I just, okay, whatwas your plan?
Yes, what was your plan?
So, so my plan actually majoredin finance because I had read
that more CEOs majored infinance than any other major.

(09:10):
So I really didn't have thattechnical at that time.
And quite honestly, it was alittle bit early.
There weren't very many women inthe technical field, but when I
interviewed with I B M, theysaid they would train me in more
technical skills.
They were interested ininvesting and in fact they sent
me to Chicago for three months,unfortunately in the, but other

(09:32):
than that I love Chicago and Iwent through a three month
intensive training, technicaltraining session, kind of if you
tested every week, if you didn'tpass, you went home.
And so, oh wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and you know what?
I founded out, I really likedit.
I, I'm left brained, so itreally kind of, I, I loved

(09:52):
problem solving and figuringthings out and, and initially I
was in more of a mainframesupport role, but it got me on
that technical path and, andprovided a, a lot of
opportunities for me to, to getsome of those skills that I, I
wouldn't take anything for that.
Right.
And that I worked on air trafficcontrol systems and that was

(10:14):
pretty darn interesting torealtime systems.
So got some, got some prettyinteresting things to do to kind
of get me on that on that hat,but that was not the original
plan in college.
But that's interesting.
But you did, and the inclinationthat you, you were at least
using the filter of what do CEOsmajor in, so you thinking c e o

(10:36):
even be absolutely always hadthat ambition to run a company
and at B m I realized I wasnever going to be the C E o.
I mean, you know, just kind ofcoming up through the technical
ranks, that's generally not theway they promote and move
people.
I did manage a pretty good sizegroup that did all of the
software development for the inroute air traffic control

(10:59):
center.
Great experience that I decidedto leave them and start my own
company because I knew in myheart I wanted to follow a path
of entrepreneurship.
And, and, and so, you know, thequestion is why now?
And I know you've done otherthings on your own with, with
consulting and things, but whynow for the SAS platform?
Yeah, so originally went out onmy own, started a company that

(11:22):
company was acquired, thendecided to look at doing
something that was truly more inmy area of interest.
Not just what are you good at,but what's your passion.
And so that's how Gout Mart wasborn was like combining that
passion and thatentrepreneurship and, and you

(11:43):
know, some things are timing too, Ellen, right?
So initially the coaches weren'tquite ready.
I did some things in fantasyfootball that didn't quite scale
pivoted back to, to my originalidea.
So, you know, I've kind oflearned about the pivot and
perseverance through this wholejourney.
So you say why now, but it's,it's, it's been a kind of a

(12:03):
longtime journey for me.
So you're saying it hasn't beenjust a smooth road of excelling
all the, what?
There been a few pitfall thatthen I'm hearing Absolutely.
Challenges, pitfalls.
But you know, it's a great wayto really learn all about what
it takes to build a business andget a get to market.

(12:26):
It's not an easy process, it'snot for the beta heart for sure.
You know, that.
Was there, was there anychallenge that you felt like was
more required, moreperseverance, like you really
grew your resilience or grit orperseverance, whatever you,
however you wanna say it.
Was there, was there one or thatyou can speak to that helped you

(12:46):
grow maybe more than the others?
Well, you know, being a girlfrom Flint, stem, Georgia, I
kind of grew up with a lot ofgrit anyway and family
businesses.
So I, I would have to sayhashtag scrappy from day one.
And then, you know, when I wasat I B M and then left them, I
worked on, I had contracts withEuro tropic control system and

(13:07):
then on nine 11 I saw mybusiness just implode.
I got phone call after phonecall because they were, there
weren't any, you know, thereweren't a whole lot going on
with flying airplanes at thattime.
And that kind of taught me alittle bit of that perseverance.
I was able to overcome that.
I got a D O D contract and thatreally is what resulted in my
business being acquired.

(13:28):
So I knew all about grid andresilience and then, you know,
with the fantasy it was toughcuz you have to balance that
perseverance and grit withsometimes it's not the right
thing to do.
Right?
Right.
When do, when do you quit?
Sometimes I think I'm better atperseverance than the knowledge
of saying, you've done enough,this is what you need to do.

(13:50):
And so kind of making thatdecision was very challenging.
But the right decision, noregrets there.
And then I think with ScottSmart, you know, it's just taken
the coaches a while and I thinktalking to some of the other
companies in my spacing, listen,it took us several years of
talking to coaches and gettingthem familiar with what we did
before they really bought in andthen it took off.

(14:11):
So I think combination of grip,but you also gotta be, you know,
pivot with a purpose.
Don't just keep doing the samething and learn more about your
space.
Not every space is gonna be thesame.
Not every market is gonna be thesame in terms of what that
perseverance looks like.
I love that.
That's so interesting becauseyou know, you are one of these

(14:33):
rare people who was raised withthe grit and persevered and then
you just only grew that withsome challenges in your, I mean
you had really, those are reallyinteresting projects and things
that you're doing in air trafficcontrol.
I'd love to touch on that alittle, but you're saying like I
can persevere, like hi day, youcan persevere through almost any
day.
The real challenge I have islike should I, should I

(14:54):
actually, or should I make adifferent choice here?
That is correct.
That is correct.
So, you know, should I dosomething different?
Should I pivot with, you know,with some new ideas?
Don't, you know, I think thatdefinition of stupidity is same,
doing the same thing over andover again and expecting
separate results, right?
Sure.
You're really changing somethingand then some things, I mean

(15:17):
let's, let's just be honest, notall things are successful.
I think I struggled with failureand allowing myself to have a
failure, but you learn a lotfrom failure.
I think if you can learn fromit, pick yourself up and move
on.
EL are the best entrepreneurs,right?
I interviewed Denise Schul,she's a, a coach for traders and

(15:37):
she said I'm a fan of her.
She wrote a couple books that I,I love and she said a great
question to ask yourself is whatmistake do you keep on making?
And when you made that commentabout like stupidity, it's the
same thing.
Okay, what mistake do you keepon making?
It's a hard question to askourselves but all of us are
making mistakes all the time.
It's just a matter of do wewanna look at it?
And and also to tag onto thatwith you said like your business

(16:00):
failure sometimes be alignedwith our personal, it's a
personal tech and the more wecan separate and learn from it,
then the more likely we are togrow and to be able to pivot
like you've done so well.
Right?
Right.
And then build on that forsuccess.
No, you're absolutely right.
I think you know, every strengthyou have can also be a weakness
too.
So yeah, grit, perseverance aregreat but in some scenarios

(16:22):
that's not the right thing tohave.
Yeah.
We talk about with my kids, wetalk about our secret sauce.
It's, I heard this definitiononce we're your so your secret
sauce, but you're great at, it'sto the point where it can be an
annoying to other people, it'sjust you have to have it so
much.
So like I'm great at movingthings forward, I'm great at
that.
But if you have to live withthat, sometimes that can be, and

(16:46):
just like you're saying, itsounds like your secret sauce
might be persevere.
That can be a problem if youdon't pivot and learn quickly
enough.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So anything to the extreme isnot necessarily good.
So you're right, you gotta dothat self-examination and that
is why I like having folks likeyou around that you can bounce
ideas off and talk to andbecause I think, you know,

(17:07):
entrepreneurship is a long wayjourney, but if you have some
other women advisors, peoplearound you to kind of keep you
honest a little bit, keep youaccountable.
Right.
It's a good thing.
Yeah.
And we didn't mention this, Ithought about that too.
Diana and I sit next to eachother at the coworking space and
it's so great cuz we're always,we're good.
We're checking in with eachother, you know, are you getting
, as did you, we're both Conarddrivers.

(17:28):
So it's fun, it's great.
I don't know if they did thatintentionally, but they made us
smart choice.
I think putting us togetherthat's, it's fun.
Absolutely.
Serendipity is what they call ithere at the village.
There you go.
There you go.
Serendipity.
So I would love to ask you, canwe just dig into the air traffic
control?
Cuz that is a, what's sofascinating about that is like
the realtime data transfer, Imean like there's so, so much in

(17:52):
tech and so much I teach isiteration and there's room.
You can always fix yourmistakes.
That that is not a scenariowhere you can make a mistake.
It have to be perfect.
So can you just speak to alittle bit about what that was
like and what was fun about thatand maybe what was most
challenging?
Yeah, and it's kind ofinteresting because I don't know
if you know, but this week therewas an outage with the air
traffic control system.

(18:12):
So I'm always intrigued and Iwanted to dig in.
It actually was not a systemthat I had worked on.
It resulted in a huge number ofization of flight.
So you know, you're talkingpublic safety and you're
talking, you know, hugeinconvenience and lots of money
loss when you start dealing withthose types of systems.

(18:33):
You know, and in that case therewas redundancy and things that
we were testing.
Mm-hmm, we couldonly test, I worked at the Miami
en route center for three yearsand we could only test from, you
know, midnight to 4:00 AM duringthe quiet times, the midships is
what they called it.
And if you ever walked to thecontrol room and the system was
down, it was just, you saw theimpact of that and you were

(18:57):
like, I do not wanna do anythingthat's going to bring this
system down.
We are going to quality andverification and validation are
so important for, for thismission critical system.
So it really did, what a greatway for me to really kinda learn
at the highest levels theimportance of a good process and

(19:21):
good quality IT system systems.
And that kind of theninfluenced, I mean, after that,
when I had my own business,that's what I did for the F FAA,
was I really helped them improvetheir qual of their software
development.
Oh, that's fascinating.
That is so interesting.
I love it.
Okay, so one, thank you forsharing that with us.
That wasn't on the, I didn'tknow you had done that.

(19:43):
So when you mentioned that, I'mlike, that is so fascinating.
It looks like I love the MELdominated fields.
I didn't plan it that way, butright there there was very few
women in air traffic controlsystems and, and at football
too.
So yeah.
Great.
And startup up andstartup.
There you go.
Diane, did you have to be onsite from to four or was it

(20:05):
automated testing?
You were right.
No, we had to be onsite.
You were working for I, thatwould not be a good shift.
I could start at four, but themidnight to four would not be
good.
It did though.
Ditto.
And you know, they would bringin Cuban coffee, it was in Ohio
in Miami, and so they wouldbring in Cuban coffee, but then
I wouldn't sleep for three days.
So it really didn't serve mewell.

(20:26):
A healthy lifestyle, but a greatexperience of the lot of the
work Bill.
All right.
So sticking of startup and techstartup, I'd love to close out
here just hearing what adviceyou would give to a woman who's
she's considering starting acompany.
Maybe it's a tech company.
What advice do you have?
Certainly.
So don't be intimidated, youknow, by, by technology.

(20:48):
I think some of us in the techfield, we like to throw terms
and acronyms around and youknow, probably we were the kids
that were bullied in middleschool.
So this is our opportunity toreally, really show off.
But don't be intimidated.
You can learn it.
You can have a co-founder ifyou're not technical, a

(21:09):
co-founder or an advisor.
Learn how to manage technicalteams.
You don't have to be hardcoredevelopment, but learn how to
manage so you're not surprisedwith a project that doesn't
result in either the schedule orfunctionality or the cost that
you expected.
Be smart about that.
I've seen, you know, a number ofthings go bad in that way, so,

(21:33):
but hey, I think it's a greatopportunity and technology is
changing and improving andbecoming a little bit easier to
develop and deliver.
I personally think there'snothing like entrepreneurship.
I think you've gotta have thatdrive and that passion for it.
I mean, there's a lot of easierways to make more money, but if
that's truly, if that's trulywhat you wanna do, I'm like, go

(21:54):
for it.
Diane Blubber, thank you so muchfor being here today.
Thanks Ellen.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
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