Meet The Stanford Grads Who Just Raised $8 Million To Help Potential Baseball And Business Superstars Make Money

In 2016, Stanford Graduate School of Business student Charlie Olson went to Scottsdale, Arizona to discuss his business idea with baseball players during their spring training. The plan which he developed along with his classmate from Stanford Eric Lax, who done research on the problematics with labor economists, was focused on the idea of ‘income pooling.’ 

Income pooling is a concept for up and coming baseball players who would come together and contractually agree to contribute a small portion of their future earnings to the shared group. As their careers progress, even if only one person from that pool “makes it big,” everyone in that pool would receive a certain percentage of the income, thus creating a safety net for the rest of the players, most of whom, understandably, won’t end up becoming Mike Trout’s teammates.

One of the first questions that Olson faced from the players when he pitched them the concept was: ‘isn’t this a bet against myself?’

What he did to describe the importance of having backup options as a diversification strategy in high volatility careers was ask them if they thought their agent is confident in their playing skills. 

“When they said yes, I asked them ‘then how come he doesn’t only have only one client, but rather they have a list of players,’” Olson says. He used the same analogy by mentioning Warren Buffet who buys ownership in a number of companies, and successful VC firms, all of which have a portfolio. 

His strategy seems to have worked with convincing baseball players to join. The company, which Olson and Lax cofounded in 2017 and named Pando, has since added over 100 baseball players in pools, and is expanding the concept of income pooling to MBA schools across the country. 

Additionally, earlier this month, Pando raised $8 million in Series A funding round led by Core Innovation Capital, with participation from Pear VC, Avalon Ventures, Ulu Ventures, Nimble Ventures, Stanford StartX Fund, WTI and Slow VC. 

According to Olson, Pando tries to solve two problems: income disparity (which in the U.S. has increased by 20% between 1980 and 2016) and the abandonment of the community system. 

“Our economy is becoming high uncertainty, high volatility, winner-take-all when it comes to career earnings,” Olson, who serves as Pando’s CEO, says. “We are much less reliant on community based institutions than we used to be, and this gives members a reason to cheer for each other and help each other out.”

Pando launched a product in early 2020 for MBA students, at Stanford and Berkeley, and recently expanded to University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and Penn’s Wharton.

“In comparison to baseball players, MBAs monetize at a different rate, so it means more revenue in the nearer term,” Olson says. 

The way Pando makes money is by taking a portion of pool distributions, if there are any.

In baseball the general rule is that the player will contribute 10% of their future baseball salary only if he makes it to the MLB and if he makes $1.6 million cumulatively. On the business side, a standard pool would take 7% of the amount above the $200,000 threshold that a member makes annually. 

The average pool size is 5.7 people and the people in it usually commit to a 10-15 year contract. The decision of who a person pools with, and on what terms, is up to the pool members.

Both Olson and Eric Lax, who’s the company’s CPO, made last year’s Sports 30 Under 30 list. The San Francisco-based company, which hires 15 people, has previously raised a $3 million seed round, and with the latest $8 million Series A, the total amount Pando has raised is over $11 million.

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