146. Designing a Sports Management Platform: Carson Kipfer + Huck Sorock

Huck Sorock was a hockey player who worked as a referee during high school to make some money. But it didn’t take long for the entrepreneurial juices to get get going when he saw the inefficiencies of the system hockey leagues used to assign referees to games—no way to swap games online; a lot of the organizing done on paper—and this was just a few years ago, Sorock is only 24. His experience led to the idea for  insight led to Refr Sports, a management tool used by leagues around the country for assigning officials, payments, invoicing, team websites and more. Refr raised a $535,000 pre-seed round in 2024, led by Groove Capital. Sorock and his co-founder Wyatt Gustafson also participated in a Techstars accelerator sponsored by the Minnesota Twins; they also won the student division of the MN Cup statewide startup competition in 2022. Like many entrepreneurs in the sports tech space, Sorock and Gustafson held up SportsEngine as their inspiration. Also started by college athletes turned founders back in 2008, SportsEngine grew into a major player for youth sports with 35 million monthly subscribers and eventually sold to NBC Sports. (You can hear the sports engine story with Justin Kaufenberg on episode 75 of By All Means.) A serial entrepreneur, Kipfer latest startup is Monoline, a personal umbrella quoting platform for insurance professionals that he launched with co-founders in 2022. He's also a mentor and investor in Refr sports and shares the advice he imparts to other first-time founders. In Office Hours, we talk about the similar mindset of athletes and entrepreneurs with Kelly Anderson Diercks, director of athletics for College of Saint Benedict.