After a nearly a year of sustained effort, we've decided to end our quest to build Minty Sports. We got off to a promising start and received a fair amount of encouragement from investors and advisors in early 2024. We found a big problem to solve. Many large brands have both points-based loyalty programs AND significant sports sponsorships, but the two initiatives operate in silos, leaving the brands unable to leverage synergies between the programs. Our system could connect these programs and provide a uniform and scalable means for brands to activate loyalty in the context of their sponsorships globally. But despite the fact that the business model we were proposing is widely used in the travel industry, and seems a natural for sports, we did not find sufficient appetite among brands and teams to warrant continued efforts and investment. There's interest out there for sure, and we still believe in the Minty Sports vision, but we simply don't have the resources to last until the market is ready.

They say you learn more from failure than from success, and I would say that's true. We learned a lot of hard lessons in 2024, and it's disappointing that we didn't succeed. But we went for it because we believed in the idea, and while we didn't triumph, we move on stronger for having tried. We left it all on the field, as they say. And we had a lot of help.

Special thanks to all the friends who shared their experience, connections, ideas and asked their hard questions to push us along the way, in particular: Charles Ehredt, Donte Scott, Barry Kahn, Russ Stanley, Bill Anderson, Darrin Gray, Aaron Cohn, Ron Seaver, Neil Viserto, Pete Vlastelica, David Perlmutter, Myles Grote, Kevin Coyle, Aileen McManamon, Chris Lencheski, Stuart Goldfarb. Greg Siefert, Tim McGarry, Ralph Tschantz, Jason Ling, Dave Todaro

Happy New Year!