edu.com
Co-founded a verified e-commerce marketplace that enabled brands to offer student-only pricing and build direct relationships with college consumers. Acquired by Student Advantage in 2001.
Founder · Operator · Advisor
A perspective earned by building.
For more than 25 years I have been working on a version of the same question: what makes people willing to share information about themselves, and how can it be used responsibly to create something valuable in return?
It has taken me through student commerce, sports loyalty, a league's data operation, live-entertainment ticketing, and now AI. The businesses changed. The question did not.
About
Built inside organizations. Built outside them. Accountable in both.
I am an entrepreneur. Over more than 25 years I have founded and led five companies, three venture-backed and two privately funded, and raised more than $100 million. Most of that work has been in sports and entertainment, building businesses around problems that established organizations could not always solve on their own.
I have also built from within established organizations. I developed a company from inside the New England Patriots and later built the NBA's global CRM, database marketing, and analytics capabilities. Seeing the industry from both sides taught me how ownership, management teams, partners, boards, and investors make decisions, and why a strong idea is only the beginning of getting something adopted.
For approximately the past decade my work has increasingly focused on AI and the role it will play in financial services and the military. I approach it as an operator rather than a technologist. The starting point is not what the technology can do. It is the problem worth solving, the outcome that matters, and whether the technology genuinely helps. I am currently Co-Founder and CEO of Collect'd.
The outcomes have varied. I have had companies acquired, changed direction when the original plan stopped being true, and led ventures that fell short of what I set out to build. That range, not just the parts that worked, is what I draw on now.
Many of the relationships have endured beyond any single company. Investors have backed subsequent ventures; board members, colleagues, and partners have returned as investors, advisors, and collaborators. That accumulated experience shapes the judgment I bring to investors, boards, founders, and CEOs today.
25+Years building
5Companies founded and led
$100M+Capital raised
Background
A.B., Harvard University, 1993 · M.B.A., Harvard Business School, 1998 · Angel investor · YPO member · Longtime judge for the Harvard Business School business plan competition and guest speaker on innovation and company building · ScoreBig subject of an HBS case study
Brief speaking bio
Adam Kanner is a founder, operator, and advisor who has spent more than 25 years building businesses around sports, consumer behavior, and emerging technology. He has founded and led five companies, three venture-backed, raised more than $100 million, built the NBA's global CRM and analytics capabilities, and worked directly with team owners, presidents, league commissioners, boards, and investors across professional sports. Adam is currently Co-Founder and CEO of Collect'd. He received his A.B. from Harvard University and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Career at a glance
Six chapters across company building, professional sports, and emerging technology.
Sports Loyalty Group
Built a company from within the New England Patriots that created NFL Extra Points and MLB Extra Bases, the first league-wide credit-card rewards programs in professional sports.
City of Champions
Created and released a direct-to-consumer film built around more than 500 of Boston's greatest sports moments, testing whether regional content could support a direct consumer relationship.
NBA
Built and led the league's global CRM, database marketing, and analytics capabilities and worked with team presidents and their staffs through Team Marketing & Business Operations.
ScoreBig
Founded an opaque, dynamically priced marketplace for distressed live-entertainment tickets that worked with approximately one-third of U.S. professional sports teams. Sold to TicketNetwork in 2016.
Collect'd
Building secure infrastructure that gives enterprise AI permissioned access to personal information directly from the individual. Initial work is focused on the U.S. military.
Experience
Six chapters.
One entrepreneurial journey.
Five companies I founded and led, with one important chapter spent inside a league. Presented chronologically because the order is part of the story.
The recurring questionWhat makes people willing to share information, and how can it be used responsibly to create something valuable in return?
Founder, Chairman & CEO
edu.com
A market that only worked if you knew who was on the other side.
The opportunity
After Harvard Business School, I co-founded edu.com, an early e-commerce marketplace built around a verified population of college students.
Brands wanted to reach students when preferences and long-term loyalties were still forming, and were willing to offer meaningfully better pricing to do it. Verification made the market possible, enabling brands to offer student-only pricing while beginning direct relationships with a strategically important audience.
Outcome
The venture-backed company was acquired by Student Advantage in 2001.
Founder
Sports Loyalty Group
Inside the Patriots, building the first league-wide rewards programs in professional sports.
The setting
My partners included the Kraft Group, owners of the New England Patriots, and Bob and Jonathan Kraft served on my board. We built the company from within the Patriots because that was where we could develop and test the program in a real team environment.
The opportunity
MBNA held a database of more than eight million sports-affinity credit-card holders. The opportunity was creating a proposition compelling enough that fans would participate and remain engaged.
Sports Loyalty Group was a joint venture involving the Kraft Group, Kessler Financial Services, and MBNA. Working alongside the Patriots' operating team gave me a direct view of how ownership and a franchise evaluate an opportunity, align commercial and operational priorities, and put something new into practice.
Outcome
The result was NFL Extra Points and, subsequently, MLB Extra Bases, the first league-wide credit-card rewards programs in professional sports. The programs created value for the issuing bank and league partners and continued well beyond my direct involvement.
Founder, GMS Capital Partners / Rabid Films
City of Champions
Content as the reason a customer relationship exists.
The idea
Through GMS Capital Partners / Rabid Films, I created City of Champions, a direct-to-consumer sports film designed to build a first-party regional sports audience and database through content.
The execution
The film assembled more than 500 of Boston's greatest sports moments and set them to music from Aerosmith, AC/DC, and the Beatles. The project brought together the major professional leagues, Boston's local teams, MLB Advanced Media, Warner Bros., and BMG.
The insight
In the strongest sports markets, attachment to the city can be as powerful as attachment to any single team. The business objective was to recreate the direct consumer relationship behind the sports rewards businesses, this time using regional sports content rather than a financial product.
Outcome
I completed and released the film in Boston, then chose not to expand it to other markets. I concluded that the cost and effort required to assemble, license, and clear the content made the model uneconomic to repeat at scale.
Vice President, Relationship Marketing & Business Development
NBA
Building inside a league, and finding the next problem worth solving.
Mandate
I was recruited by Scott O'Neil, who led the NBA's Team Marketing & Business Operations group, to establish the league's global CRM, database marketing, and analytics capabilities from scratch and help teams across the league put them to work.
Scope
I built and led those capabilities, turning fragmented consumer information into an operating resource the league and its teams could use. I worked with league leadership, including David Stern and Adam Silver. Through Team Marketing & Business Operations, I also worked directly with team presidents and their staffs on CRM and relationship marketing.
What I learned
How decisions get made across a league, how stakeholders become aligned, and why organizational adoption is almost always harder than the technology itself.
The next problem
It was also where I encountered the problem that would define my next company: how to monetize unsold ticket inventory without publicly discounting or damaging existing customer relationships.
Co-Founder, CEO & Executive Chairman
ScoreBig
A marketplace built to solve what the industry could not solve for itself.
Scale
ScoreBig worked with approximately one-third of all U.S. professional sports teams, major primary-ticketing and live-entertainment companies including Ticketmaster and AEG, and organizations across the broader entertainment industry.
The problem
While at the NBA, I saw teams and venues confronting a persistent economic problem: substantial amounts of ticket inventory were going unsold, leaving revenue unrealized and seats empty.
Why the industry could not solve it
The NBA could not solve it from within the league. Teams could not openly discount their own tickets without undermining pricing integrity, alienating full-price customers, and creating conflict with established distribution partners. The solution also could not be limited to one league's inventory. Consumers wanted access to sports, concerts, theater, and other live entertainment.
The solution
I founded ScoreBig as the first opaque, dynamically priced marketplace for distressed live-entertainment tickets. Consumers named what they would pay without a discounted price ever being publicly displayed, allowing teams and venues to fill seats while protecting their brands, prices, distribution relationships, and existing customers.
Reach and outcome
Building those relationships put me in sustained dialogue with owners, team presidents, league executives and commissioners, boards, and investors, including presenting the company's model to the NHL Board of Governors. The company was sold to TicketNetwork in 2016.
Co-Founder & CEO
Collect’d
The information AI cannot reach.
The work
I am Co-Founder and CEO of Collect'd, where we are building secure infrastructure for personal AI.
The problem
Much of the information required to produce genuinely useful personal outcomes, including family, financial, health, education, and employment information, sits with the individual. Collect'd gives enterprise AI secure, permissioned access to that information directly from the individual and under their control, without requiring organizations to collect or store it themselves.
Initial focus
The company's initial work is with the U.S. military, focused on reducing service members' administrative burden, modernizing personnel management, and improving readiness. Collect'd holds three issued U.S. patents and is Phase III eligible.
Capital
Collect'd has raised more than $5 million from more than 26 individual investors. Many are repeat investors or people who served on boards, worked alongside me, or partnered with me during earlier chapters of my career.
Related advisory work
I have also advised an AI-native financial-services company as it brings AI into hedge funds and investment firms still determining what the technology means for their businesses, which use cases have genuine utility, and what their organizations are ready to adopt.
Advisory perspective
Judgment shaped by experience.
Alongside leading Collect'd, I advise investors, ownership groups, boards, founders, and senior executives when my experience is relevant to a decision in front of them.
My perspective is business-first. The starting point is the problem or opportunity, the outcome that matters, and how the organization creates value—not a predetermined technology recommendation or AI strategy. From there, the question is whether a technology or business model can create value, what the organization would have to change, and where expectations or hype need to be reset.
Most of my career has been spent working on sports-related problems from three vantage points: inside a franchise, inside a league, and through companies built for the broader industry. I also draw on more than 25 years of decisions involving company building, capital, boards, investors, co-founders, strategic change, acquisitions, exits, and outcomes that did not follow the original plan.