Marucci Sports - Kurt Ainsworth

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2024

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

No athlete wishes for an injury, but when Kurt Ainsworth’s bad shoulder derailed his professional pitching career, it created a big opportunity. Kurt and two partners started a wooden bat company in his backyard, bringing their intimate knowledge of baseball to every bat they sold. Soon, big-name players like Sammy Sosa were swinging them, but Kurt knew they had to expand to aluminum bats to reach the wider field of non-professional players. The company faced a near death experience when the NCAA decertified its bats for being too powerful, but eventually regained its footing. In 2013, Marucci Sports was acquired for over half a billion dollars; and next year, Marucci will slide past Louisville Slugger to become the official bats of Major League Baseball.

This episode was produced by Devan Schwartz with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei.

It was edited by Neva Grant with research from Katherine Sypher.

Our engineers were Maggie Luthar and Jimmy Keeley.

You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at [email protected].

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to how I built this early and ad-free right now.
0:05.7	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:10.6	You're a startup founder.
0:12.3	Finding product market fit is probably your number one priority.
0:16.5	But to land bigger customers, you also need security compliance.
0:21.1	And obtaining your SOC2 or ISO-27-001 certification can open those big doors.
0:28.0	But they take time and energy pulling you away from building and shipping.
0:33.0	That's where Vanta comes in.
0:35.3	Vanta is the all-in-one compliance solution helping startups like yours
0:39.8	get audit ready and build a strong security foundation quickly and painlessly. How? Vanta
0:46.9	automates the manual security tasks that slow you down, helping you streamline your audit. And the
0:53.5	platform connects you with trusted
0:55.1	VCOs to build your program, auditors to get you through audits quickly, and a marketplace
1:01.3	for essentials like pen testing. So whether you're closing your first deal or gearing up for growth,
1:07.5	Vanta makes compliance easy. Join over 8,000 companies, including many Y Combinator and
1:13.9	tech star startups who trust Vanta. Simplify compliance and get $1,000 off at vanta.com
1:20.5	slash built. That's V-A-N-T-A.com slash built for $1,000 off.
1:29.0	I feel like I'm missing out because everyone is either starting a side hustle or becoming
1:33.6	their own boss.
1:34.6	And you know what they're hearing a lot?
1:37.5	It's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run and
1:42.4	grow your business.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -59 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Guy Raz | Wondery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Guy Raz | Wondery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.