- Nike recently announced it acquired TraceMe, a company founded by NFL star Russell Wilson. These are the details.
Athletic sports giant Nike recently announced it acquired Seattle-based digital media company TraceMe, according to Geekwire. TraceMe was founded by NFL star and Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson — who was the executive chairman of the company. Some of the investors that put money into TraceMe include YouTube founder Chad Hurley, Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai, Madrona Venture Group, Bezos Expeditions (the investment arm of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos).
TraceMe started out as an app where users can connect with sports stars and celebrities. However, the company had a hard time differentiating from the major social media platforms. So the business model shifted to a platform where sports teams, broadcasters, and fans can engage with each other around sporting events.
“NIKE, Inc. has acquired TraceMe to supplement the company’s content strategy on Nike-owned platforms,” said Nike in a statement about the deal.
TraceMe CEO Jason LeeKeenan along with several employees at the company also now list Nike as its employer on LinkedIn. Specifically, LeeKeenan is listed as the head of Nike Seattle where he is leading “a phenomenal group of digital product, design and engineering teammates, dedicated to building technology that supports Nike’s vision of making sport a daily habit.”
Some of the TraceMe team members that are now working at Nike include VP of Engineering Duoc Nguyen (now Nike’s Director of Engineering), senior software development engineer Vlad Iacob (now a senior software engineer at Nike), VP of Product Trevin Chow (now direct of product at Nike), and VP of Head of Design Sophie Otto (now director of digital product design at Nike).
While Nike rarely makes tech acquisitions, the company also bought leading retail predictive analytics and demand sensing firm Celect earlier this year. At the time of the acquisition, Nike COO Eric Sprunk said that as the demand for its product grow the company “insight-driven, data-optimized and hyper-focused on consumer behavior” in order to serve consumers more personally at scale.
