Welcome to Around The Association! I'm your host, Christian (or as some people on the internet call me, 'Bayesian Baller'). We're presented by The Krause House - a community of hoops fanatics crazy enough to purchase and operate an NBA team as a DAO. On this podcast, we'll cover all the latest happenings around the association and dive into a variety of fascinating topics including analytics, betting, culture, and (of course) a little bit of Web3. If any of those things pique your interest, then you've come to the right place!
All content for Around The Association is the property of Krause House DAO and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Welcome to Around The Association! I'm your host, Christian (or as some people on the internet call me, 'Bayesian Baller'). We're presented by The Krause House - a community of hoops fanatics crazy enough to purchase and operate an NBA team as a DAO. On this podcast, we'll cover all the latest happenings around the association and dive into a variety of fascinating topics including analytics, betting, culture, and (of course) a little bit of Web3. If any of those things pique your interest, then you've come to the right place!
S2, E1 • Startup Life, Hoop Dreams, & the UCLA Days with Mustafa Abdul-Hamid
Around The Association
1 hour 32 minutes 33 seconds
3 years ago
S2, E1 • Startup Life, Hoop Dreams, & the UCLA Days with Mustafa Abdul-Hamid
On the first episode of Season 2, Christian sits down with former UCLA point guard turned serial tech entrepreneur, Mustafa Abdul-Hamid.
Mustafa played his college basketball at UCLA from 2006-2010 where he went to back-to-back Final Fours and was teammates with future NBA All-Stars including Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love, and Jrue Holiday.
After capping off his senior season with a buzzer beating 3-pointer over Isaiah Thomas and the Washington Huskies, Mustafa headed overseas and embarked on a 4-year journey in professional basketball that took him through Serbia, France, Slovenia, Germany, and Lebanon from 2010-2014.
After satisfying his dreams of playing professional basketball, Mustafa returned to the States where he enrolled in graduate school at Stanford. It was during his time in Palo Alto that Mustafa would launch two companies (both of which would eventually be acquired) and meet his wife (who would soon become his business partner).
One of the companies, Boost, began as mobile app for youth basketball players to get coaching feedback from professional players. After several persevering years, Mustafa would pivot from the youth coaching model to a college basketball analytics product. And from there, Boost skyrocketed.
From 2019-2021, Boost would go on to work with some of the most prominent Div. 1 college basketball programs in the country - including his alma mater UCLA, Florida, and Louisville among many others. Boost quickly became a pioneer in the sports industry for its use of natural language generation and data-driven storytelling, ultimately leading to an acquisition in late-2021.
With a focus on advanced analytics and automated sports content, Boost is now partnering with some of the largest and most powerful sports media properties in the world. And the vision that Mustafa laid out for himself years prior on the courts in Westwood are now falling into place.
Oh! And we haven’t even mentioned the best part about this episode. Originally from St. Louis, Christian and Mustafa both attended the same high school (shoutout to MICDS)! Though despite being 5 years apart, the two had never met. In fact, the two have now “known” each other for close to 10 years - and worked together at Boost for the past 3 - but hadn’t met in-person until the day before sitting down to record this podcast. Enjoy!
Around The Association
Welcome to Around The Association! I'm your host, Christian (or as some people on the internet call me, 'Bayesian Baller'). We're presented by The Krause House - a community of hoops fanatics crazy enough to purchase and operate an NBA team as a DAO. On this podcast, we'll cover all the latest happenings around the association and dive into a variety of fascinating topics including analytics, betting, culture, and (of course) a little bit of Web3. If any of those things pique your interest, then you've come to the right place!
