In 2018 two Costa Rican entrepreneurs, Nick Hayward and Allan Matarrita, participated in a tech accelerator program in San Antonio,TX. As founders of independent startups, Nick and Allan had known each other for years within the Costa Rican tech startup community, but had never worked together. During a brainstorming session one evening during the San Antonio accelerator, they realized their ideas had natural synergies and decided to abandon their current businesses and combine their efforts into a new entity, Sports Sonar, Inc. Together, Allan and Nick embarked on a new journey as partners.
Thanks to the resources of the accelerator, Nick and Allan were able to raise funds for their new company and assembled an experienced Board of Directors to help guide the new business. They set up operations in Texas and Costa Rica, and began operating as The Sonar Company.
In March of 2020, the world was overwhelmed by a global pandemic. Sonar’s sports and entertainment client base was effectively lost overnight. The company pivoted during this time and created two new pandemic-proof product offerings, while waiting for the impact of COVID-19 to wane. Sadly, and compounding an already horrible year, tragedy struck when Chairman/ CEO Nick Hayward lost his life in a freak accident that summer.
Our Board of Directors immediately appointed director Roy Terracina, an executive deeply experienced in business finance and operations, as Chairman and CEO to continue Nick’s efforts and keep Sonar moving forward.
Later that summer, The Sonar Company applied to be a participant in Comcast NBCUniversal’s SportsTech accelerator. By the fall, the Sonar team was deep into the program’s interview process, hoping to be one of ten successful startups in a field of over a thousand applicants. If successful, the program would offer The Sonar Company funding, curriculum, industry expertise, and access to NBC Universal media properties, partners and affiliates. Remarkably, the power of Sonar’s technologies and our unique story led to The Sonar Company being chosen as one of the accelerator’s ten finalists!
The SportsTech program was invaluable to us, providing introductions to some of the sports and entertainment industry’s biggest names, and connecting us with experienced mentors with broad business and industry expertise. These mentors provided insight into their specific fields of experience and helped us understand how we could leverage our proprietary technologies in the sports and entertainment marketplace.
One particularly successful aspect of the program was introducing us to Danny Abelson, an audio engineer with over 40 years of experience in sports and entertainment technology development. Danny was one mentor that the Sonar team bonded with especially well. By the end of the program, Abelson agreed to join The Sonar Company as our COO, who along with CEO Roy Terracina, is responsible for crafting our business strategy and managing our daily activities. Recently, we have been able to re-engage with the sports and entertainment communities and are developing technologies for them we believe will be extremely impactful in the broadcast and live event business segments.
With the remarkable momentum afforded us by participation in Comcast NBCUniversal’s SportsTech accelerator, combined with an experienced management team, we are taking the vision first imagined by our Co-Founders Nick Hayward and Allan Mattarita, and building The Sonar Company to be an innovative, dynamic, and successful company.
