Mike Krzyzewski, the head basketball
On September 12th Coach Krzyzewski, who has led Duke to 5 national titles and the USA Men’s team to 6 gold medals, unveiled a new, digital leadership platform dubbed PowerForward.
The mobile video network will target the B2B market offering subscriptions to video content and case studies aimed to help corporations foster leadership and build teams. Krzyzewski, who for years has given speeches on leadership and currently lectures at Duke’s Fuqua business school, shaped the platform’s themes and content. He cofounded the start-up with his sports agent, CAA, which built out the technology. Chrissie Gorman, a Duke grad and former consultant at
No stranger to the corporate world, Krzyzewski tapped his network of technology and business leaders to help get the platform off the ground. Powerfroward’s backers and advisors include
Early in September, I spoke with Coach Krzyzewski about his jump from coaching college basketball to co-founding a tech start-up. Below, an edited Q&A:
Steven Bertoni: I’m sure you get ten business pitches a day. How did Powerforward come to be?
Coach K: I work with CAA, and I told them, "I don't know how long I'm going to coach. But I like to teach. And I love leadership and teamwork. That's what I've spoken about forever. And when I’m finished I don't want to be on TV and do games. I wanted to continue to teach, and I wanted to continue to have an impact. To me, the least taught important thing in business is leadership.”
SB: Leadership is hard to define. As a coach, and a West Point graduate, what does strong leadership look like to you?
Coach K: A great team has ownership from top to bottom. And you don't just get that ownership by paying somebody. You get that ownership by listening to their ideas, but also empowering them to be able to make decisions at the level that the action is going on, which would then produce a more positive outcome. It's not just about having this great leader who's giving Vince Lombardi speeches. It's about having leaders throughout the organization.
SB: PowerForward’s content and cases are built on your themes and ideas. But other people (coaches, players, military leaders) will appear on the platform too. You have one of the best personal brands in sports. How do you protect that reputation when adding it to a business?
Coach Krzyzewski: I'm active in it. In other words, they're not going to put something out if I don't agree with it. We've looked at all this stuff. The people that we've interacted with are people we all agree with. Going forward, I need to make sure that I’m always involved in that way. This is not about me being some figurehead. I would want that the content of this be at the level it is right now. And I think it could get even better as it grows because I think people will want to be a part of it. We're not asking them to write a chapter in our book. We're asking them to tell a leadership story. And maybe that person might come back and tell more because they'll find that they're part of this team of leadership.
SB: How do you adjust from sports to start-ups?
Coach K: To be frank, I'm learning about this. I'm not in a company, and it's intriguing to me. I want to flow with it. Just like with my teams, I try not to structure them too much so I can run what I call "motion offense," and make reads and see where it will go.
SB: You said you have no plans to stop coaching Duke. Why are you launching PowerForward now?”
Coach K: I want to have something that's already established. I don't want to retire from my day job here and say, "Okay, now, what am I going to do?" I already have an idea of things that I want to do, and this is one of them. You have to keep going forward and stay relevant. I would like it if every second on this earth, I have some relevance to what’s going on.
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