John West is founder and CEO of The Whistle, a sports network of content and coverage created for the next generation. It’s all the latest updates and pro partners you’d find on FOX or ESPN but geared toward pint-sized fans.
The Whistle is John’s third startup, but he’s learned that they’re not all created equally. He shares how The Whistle has taught his team about scaling up, how being an entrepreneur wasn’t a set goal, and that eating rice cakes was just part of the process.
Passionate commitment is a key to being a creator. It is such an awesome responsibility to be able to take an idea from inception to an exciting vision. With this great responsibility comes a commitment to succeed, even if it requires new thinking around the initial idea or flexibility around the approach. “Pivot” is an overused word today, but all three of the companies I’ve started were very different than what I had initially envisioned. I think a true commitment to win drives that flexibility.
I never set out to start, grow, and sell multiple companies. I have a hyper-focused approach toward researching, formulating a plan, building a team, raising capital, and growing companies. I truly enjoy the adrenaline that comes from creating something cool out of absolute uncertainty and working with others who also thrive during that process.
Sports had an incredible impact during my formative years, even though I wasn’t born with natural athletic talent. I stumbled into rowing and found a sport where hard work and dedication could lead to the joy of competition at a top level. More importantly, I learned how much harder I could push my boundaries. Although it involved eating celery and rice cakes for four months to drop from 190 pounds to 155 pounds to make the National Lightweight Rowing Team, our team won the National Championship that year.
Three distinct beliefs led to creating The Whistle. I thought there was a very unique opportunity to build a large, valuable company that would make a big difference in the world because:
1. Today’s generation has their own version of every segment of media (music, gaming, fashion, etc.) but not sports. Why do 1.9 billion global youth only have sports media designed for their parents?
2. Today’s digital generation lives across screens and has very different media requirements.
3. Sports naturally provide critical life skills, including self-confidence and teamwork, math and science, and smart fitness and nutrition.
If sports media could be created in a fun and entertaining way, distributed across different digital platforms that today’s youth actively spend time on, we can really engage a huge global audience.
The Whistle is different from my last two startups — in speed and size. Because our target demographic is one of the first adopters of digital platforms over the past few years, we’ve had to move very quickly to respond to these emerging trends. As we quickly scale our community globally, we also believe we are building a multi-billion dollar company that will serve hundreds of millions of sports fans and athletes.
Photographs by Lauren Kallen