Founder feature: Leveling up with SportAI
Lauren Pedersen, co-founder of SportAI, is on a mission to revolutionize the sports industry by enabling athletes at all levels to analyze and improve their performance with the help of computer vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
A competitive tennis player since the age of 10, Lauren Pedersen left her home in Wellington, New Zealand at the age of 18 to attend American University in Washington, DC on a tennis scholarship. She competed all four years as a NCAA Division I athlete, the highest level of intercollegiate athletics in the U.S.
After graduating, she pursued a career in advertising, starting at Grey Worldwide in New York City. She later moved to Oslo with her Norwegian spouse and planned to stay a few years. That was seventeen years ago.
“The first thing I did when I moved to Oslo was join the Oslo Tennis Club,” says Lauren, emphasizing how it was key to forming an instant social circle. For her career, however, relocating to Norway meant a career shift. She lacked experience with the local advertising industry and was not fluent in Norwegian, so she looked into the international tech startup scene.
“It was nothing like it is today. It’s a completely different scenario now,” she remarks. She found her niche in helping companies expand globally, taking on roles such as CMO at Airthings and Instabank, as well as Brand Director at Opera Software.
“I’ve loved working in Norway’s tech scene, building relationships, networks, and companies along the way,” she reflects.
Game, set, match
In late 2023, Lauren co-founded SportAI with a team of former colleagues and experts from her network. The founding team brings together diverse expertise in sports, technology, and business, with chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen among its investors.
SportAI is the ultimate combination of Lauren’s entrepreneurial passions: tennis and technology. Revolutionizing sports technique analysis through AI and computer vision, the startup provides high-level performance feedback by analyzing video footage from mobile phones and court cameras and broadcast.
“We are SportAI, not racket AI,” Lauren emphasizes. “It's all about analyzing body movement and technique. If you think about a serve in tennis, it could also be a free throw in basketball or a cover drive in cricket or very, very, many sports where you train repeatedly to perfect a technique. That's where we are. That's our sweet spot.”
Early partnerships include MATCHi, a leading racket sports booking platform that manages 15,000 courts worldwide, 2000 of which have cameras. SportAI’s technology will analyze the footage and deliver detailed performance insights for players and coaches.
Future collaborations will include tennis schools, broadcasters and equipment manufacturers.
“I couldn't be happier. I get to have meetings about sports and then dive into how we're going to improve the whole sports industry with this amazing technology. I have only excitement for what's ahead,” says Lauren, adding that she places a lot of value on Norway’s commitment to democratic values, the digital transformation, easy access to outdoor recreation, and – combined with ranking second for Olympic medal counts per capita.
Now a Norwegian citizen who considers Oslo home, Lauren encourages other entrepreneurs to build a community of support for each other. “It could be in many different ways. It could be recommending a new hire. It could be talking to investors. It could be all these things. We really appreciate that home base,” She says, emphasizing the need for collaboration between commercial and government interests as well to foster a thriving startup environment.
“ Oslo has come a long way and has every opportunity to be an absolute startup leader in the world. Like all good sports teams, we need our home nation behind us, and that's true for startups as well. ”
Snapshot:
Founder: Lauren Pedersen
Country of origin: New Zealand
Company: SportAI
Year founded: 2023
What the company does: Revolutionizing sports technique analysis through computer vision and artificial intelligence
Sector: Sports
Number of employees: 7
Markets served: Europe with plans to expand globally
