TRAITS INSIGHTS STARTED HERE

Traits Insights is chasing peak performance

Meet the Victorian-founded sports analytics platform being adopted by the world’s top clubs.

Traits Insights is barely two years old, but already the analytics startup is helping world-class sporting clubs gain a competitive edge and has attracted the attention of elite athletes globally.

The company’s software platform helps professional sports teams translate complex performance data so they can identify players’ strengths, develop talent and make informed strategic decisions.

AFL clubs Melbourne and Fremantle have been using Traits to help guide player development and recruitment, while the company’s platform has also been adopted by a range of soccer and cricket teams across the world.

It’s a success story that founder Dan Pelchen could never have imagined just a few short years ago.

Dan is a data scientist with a PhD in Human Resource Analytics – a fancy way of saying “talent identification through numbers”. His early work focused on projecting how AFL draftees would perform once they entered the professional system, and through this he discovered new ways of translating data about player performance that were easy for coaches to understand.

His expertise led him from working as a data performance analyst at Collingwood Football Club, where he put his research into play, to being poached by English Premier League club Chelsea to implement an early version of the Traits system.

Dan’s time at Chelsea was a resounding success, but it was only after he returned to Australia when COVID-19 hit that he started to consider scaling his idea.

When he first returned home, he was moving from club to club as a consultant, building his models into the infrastructure of individual teams.

“I started working for a number of different clubs of varying shapes and sizes and it was pretty clear there was a need for Traits across the entire sporting landscape,” he said.

It was time to expand his vision.

“That’s when I made the decision to go down the route of wrapping things into a software platform, so it could be done in a far more time and cost-effective way.”

From solopreneur to software founder

Dan knew his product would be unlike anything else on the market, providing an easy way for coaches and management teams to gain detailed insights about players.

But bringing a software-as-a-service product to market is no mean feat, and as a first-time founder he had countless questions about how to even start building a sustainable company.

Accelerator programs funded by LaunchVic at the Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) helped him map out how to turn his academic work into a viable product.

“It also showed I wasn’t on this completely unique journey, and that there were well-worn paths to secure your first round of funding, and how to scale a business,” he said.

Receiving mentoring from ASTN chair Dr. Martin Schlegel and spending time with other founders in the sports tech space also helped Dan think clearly about Traits’ position in the global marketplace.

“When I was first starting out, particularly as a sole founder, it was enormous to have access to a community of like-minded people who knew the landscape,” he said.

Backing from the best

Traits’ momentum has earned it backing from well-known investors, including venture capital fund Artesian and APEX Capital, a group comprised of professional athletes who invest in sports ventures.

The APEX fund is backed by a group of 100 elite athletes from across the UK and Europe (including Trent Alexander‑Arnold, Juan Mata, Alexander Zverev, Lando Norris, Carlos Sainz, Valtteri Bottas, Kanoa Igarashi and Rafael Varane to name a few.)

Dan says having the backing of such high-profile sportspeople was a huge win for the business.

“It’s been incredible to have the endorsement and support of the elite athletes in the APEX community.”

The establishment of the company’s advisory board has also been a major milestone. The Traits board includes FIFA High Performance Expert Ged Roddy MBE, Adelaide Crows high performance manager Darren Burgess and successful sports tech entrepreneur Ben Turner.

These days, the company’s own team is spread across the world. Traits remains headquartered in Victoria, but the business also has staff in New South Wales and London.

Dan has been doing plenty of travel as the company grows, including a recent trip to Portugal for the duration of the football transfer window to deliver for a growing range of clients and meet new potential customers.

The growth of the business has meant the Traits team often needs to be across the details of many different sporting competitions at one time to make sure they stay up to date with the needs of Traits users.

Now that a strong foundation is in place, Traits is quickly becoming a recognised name in sports technology.

The business is currently speaking to hundreds of clubs around the world, mainly in the UK and Europe, and is quickly gaining momentum with a growing user base.

“It’s been awesome to see the growth of where we are having these conversations, across clubs of all different shapes and sizes. The appetite for what we are doing is very, very encouraging,” Dan said.