When collegiate sports programs recruit athletes, they can measure concrete metrics like a player’s sprint speed, throwing velocity, and physical strength. But there has never been a clear way to quantify the mental aspects of sports — how well will this athlete perform in high-pressure situations? Will they stay calm, focus, and give it their best shot?
Or will they panic in the spotlight and mess up? NTangible co-founder and CEO Dan Connerty thinks he’s unlocked the secret to measuring if a player will execute in the most important moments. Ed Levine, a professor emeritus at the University of South Florida, Connerty developed a psychological assessment that he says can predict how likely an athlete is to perform under pressure.
The Clutch Factor assessment is inspired by the Thematic Apperception Test, a psychological examination in which people are presented with photos of ambiguous situations and describe what they see happening, who they imagine themselves to be in the scene, and what they think might happen next. When I took the quiz and answered honestly, I got a below average score of 584, which didn’t surprise me — I dreaded high-leverage situations when I played high school sports. When I took the quiz a second time, answering as I imagined a very level-headed, clutch, top recruit might respond, I scored an 802.
Perhaps the platform would work better as a way for coaches to learn more about their athletes and help them improve in weaker areas. Connerty thinks that “clutch” is a skill that can be trained. While he isn’t positioning NTangible as a training platform, he worked with former MLB sports psychologist Howie Schwartz to create a list of exercises that athletes can use as a starting point for upping their mental game.
While Connerty’s background is in baseball, NTangible now supports testing for nine sports. He also has ambitions to expand the clutch test to apply to corporate settings, so that HR departments can evaluate employees’ strengths and weaknesses under pressure. The NTerpret assessment translates more directly to the workplace — the respondent answers questions about how they best respond to coaching and feedback, giving management data on how that employee processes instructions and acts on information.
NTangible’s most viable business model seems to be selling to sports organizations and companies directly, rather than to individual athletes. The company will elaborate on its strategy on stage on Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt, where it’s currently among the top 20 companies dueling for the grand prize at Startup Battlefield. You can check out the rest of the field, and the investors who will decide the winner, by joining us in person this week at Disrupt, happening Tuesday through Thursday, October 13 to 15, in downtown San Francisco.
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