So very early on I brought on people that had 20 to 30-plus years of experience in the space to help me bring my idea to life and to take it to the next level, making sure we were doing that strategically and soundly. What I didn't know was the food industry. I knew what I knew, but I also knew what I didn't know. I strongly believe in hiring for your weaknesses. A lot of the skills I learned in building that from the ground up were skills I took with me to start a business on my own. While we worked closely with the rest of the marketing department, we also worked independently in building these programs and hiring our own agencies, and making sure that we were being really genuine in what we were putting out there to these fans. I was able to pitch to our commissioner at the time, David Stern, and secure a budget for our team to go out and build all of these programs.
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I was part of marketing, which is a large group within the league, but within that I managed my own team that focused on targeting our priority fan segments-such as youth, Hispanics, African-Americans, women-and figuring out how to grow those bases so that we had a pipeline of fans toward the future and also an increase in viewership, sales, and attendance. SORROSA : While I was at the NBA, I had a very entrepreneurial goal in what I was doing. SPORTTECHIE: How did your time in the sports industry and the NBA prepare you to enter the food startup space? I decided after I had my second daughter that I would leave my full-time job and start this business, and create a product that could help meet some of the growing demands of the baby food space. So I was always close to the farming aspect of food and also making food that was healthy and nutritious and brought people together. We also owned restaurants because his hobby was cooking, so we were always hosting people at our farm for gigantic, elaborate meals that he would make. Then he eventually purchased a banana farm and started working with a local family in exporting his own bananas.
He worked for Del Monte Foods as general manager for the region for awhile.
I wanted them to grow up around food the same way I did growing up in South America. I didn't want my daughters to become another statistic. Saskia Sorrosa : The jump from the NBA to Fresh Bellies, what really triggered that was having kids and realizing that everything offered in the marketplace was oversaturated with sugars and bland foods, and that it was really a contributing factor in the growing epidemic of childhood obesity. SPORTTECHIE: Where did you get your inspiration? We really highlighted the benefits of the products to address the issues in the market. SORROSA: We made sure in addition to presenting the facts about what the market and nutrition issues were telling us about children, that we also highlighted how our products just stood out from everything else that was in the market, because it met a demand that hadn't been met in the past. SPORTTECHIE: How did you prepare to make that pitch? I’ve always said throughout my career, ‘Focus on the research not the me-search.’ It’s about the stats and data, not about your opinion. Just presenting the facts that helped us win. When you look at what we're feeding them and how that's a contributing factor, and yet an entire industry has been doing nothing to change it-it's a really compelling story. The percentage of children who are predicted to be obese by the age of 35 is 57%. SORROSA: Presenting the statistics was really what allowed us to come out on top. SPORTTECHIE: What set your team apart at last year’s NFLPA Pitch Day? We recently caught up with Sorrosa, who worked as the NBA’s VP of marketing before launching Fresh Bellies in 2015, to talk about the crossover between sports and business, why she took the leap into entrepreneurship, the ups and downs of growing her company, and her best advice for nailing a pitch.
Now the company’s line of healthy and savory baby food products can be found in 2,000 stores.Ī year later, Sorrosa will be at the 2020 NFLPA Pitch Day (on Wednesday afternoon in Miami), though this time she’ll be a judge looking at startups in three categories: Consumer Packaged Goods, Human Performance and Athlete-Led Companies. At the time, Fresh Bellies was sold in about 300 stores. Out of the 10 early-stage startups at the event, the organic baby food maker won first place and received marketing and licensing opportunities from the NFLPA that helped transform her business. Three days after Fresh Bellies appeared on an episode of Shark Tank last January (all of the sharks passed), founder and CEO Saskia Sorrosa was in Atlanta to make a presentation at the NFLPA’s annual Pitch Day.
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