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The NIL Playbook Is Broken and Tykoon AI Is Rewriting It for Every Student Athlete
00:25:04
The NIL Playbook Is Broken and Tykoon AI Is Rewriting It for Every Student Athlete
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Lead with AI on today's episode, it sits at the intersection of AI sports and youth empowerment. The rise of NIL has opened doors for student athletes, but it's also created a system where information asymmetry can determine who wins, who gets exploited and who's left behind. I'm joined by Peter Emu, founder of Tycoon AI, a company using AI to to help youth and college athletes understand their value, navigate NIL deals and protect their long term interests. Let's get into it.
- [00:40]
B
Welcome to lead with AI. I'm Dr. Tamara Nall. In each episode, we will take you behind the scenes with visionary leaders shaping the future of AI across public and private sectors. Join us as we explore groundbreaking projects and innovations that are transforming industries and making a real impact on people's lives. Let's dive in.
- [01:11]
A
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Lead with AI where we feature founders and their wonderful AI tools and tech. And today I'm so excited to have Peter Iwu, who is our founder of Tycoon AI. How are you, Peter?
- [01:26]
C
I'm doing amazing. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [01:29]
A
Absolutely, absolutely. So as all of our guests know, it is such a pleasure to have founders like you on here. And because of you, we actually have grown. We actually hit number one in tech on Apple podcast last year and won the woo the W3 Award for interviews and guest podcast. So we're really excited about it. But I want to get into this selfishly because I have a nephew that I'm trying, he's on social media anyway, so I want him and he's an athlete, so I want him to kind of use Tycoon. They might have actually already signed up for it, but I want the world to know what Tycoon is. But before we get into that, tell us about who you are like, your vision, what moves you. How did you even come up with the idea of tycoon? And why did you feel that this is filling a gap and why it's needed?
- [02:23]
C
For sure. As some of you all know, my name is Peter Iwu. I'm from Nigeria by descent, born and raised in Hyesville, Maryland. Currently based in Los Angeles. Class of 2022, Morgan State University graduate. Shout out to the bears who are watching. And at core, I'm a marketing strategist, an entrepreneur and author. My purpose in life is to help average individuals solve complex problems through creativity and innovation and support. So I measure my success by impact. A lot of people measure their impact by dollars. I like to Measure my impact by the number of lives being changed. So I had came across this opportunity at my HBCU when I had came across the face to face realization that student athletes weren't getting the support that most of us think they are. Like you might see a student athlete, they have the uniform, they have the cheerleaders during their game and all the optics look amazing. But behind closed doors in certain scenarios and situations, a lot of these student athletes are lacking the guidance for them to truly maximize and benefit from this name, image and likeness opportunity. So it initially started with me supporting one of my peers and then we ended up starting one of the first black name, image and likeness agencies before kind of taking it a step further, utilizing AI. So that's kind of like a little nutshell on how it came about and some of the amazing work at Impact we're looking to do in the space.
- [03:43]
A
I love that. And you're so right, like there are so many great athletes that just don't have the access and the opportunity because, you know, follow the dollars. And so, you know, it's amazing that you started the agency and now with Tycoon, et cetera, with the AI, et cetera. So tell us about it, what is it exactly?
- [04:04]
C
For sure. So yeah, Tycoon AI is a mobile platform available on the Apple Store and Google Play store. And you could think about it as your AI marketing strategies. Right? So it's, it helps student athletes build sustainable personal brands to properly monetize the name, image and likeness space. So when a lot of people think about name, image and likeness, they think about dollars, they think about brand partnerships, they think about getting paid. While that is the nil promise, the reality is it's still a responsibility of the student athlete, the parent, the school, whoever's supporting the student athlete to make sure that there is a personal brand. Who are you outside of your points? Who are, who are you outside of what you do on the field or the court, on the mat, depending on what your sport is. And this is what brands look for when they come to your social media. They want to be able to come to your social media and see their brands in your content. So where Tycoon AI comes in is providing you that content strategy so you don't have to be stranded and think, what do I post? When do I post? What social media platforms do I want to engage on? So Tycoon AI gives you that strategy based off of your goals, based off your interests. We also have pro features that we're working on that do support brand partnerships. And merchandise, which then makes it a whole suite experience. But the key focus of the platform is to help student athletes build sustainable and personal brands that can put them on a highway to a successful NIO experience.
- [05:25]
A
Got it? Now, what's kind of like the Avatar? Like what age are there certain countries you should be in? Should you be at a certain level? Should you already have social media? Should it be a developed skill and not a hobby? Like, what's the entry point to tycoon?
- [05:48]
C
For sure. So the entry point is available to those starting at the high school level. So if you're a high school athlete and you're gearing up for college, you want to maximize this NIL experience even at the high school level, because certain states like Georgia and Maryland, as you may know, NIL is becoming allowed at the NI at the high school level. So high school athletes are now able to engage with local brands or at least start getting familiar with the concept of personal branding and maximizing NIO opportunity early and then even putting them in the front seat. As it relates to going into college with experience and understanding of a personal brand, it's important as it relates to content creation, et cetera. So if you're a high school athlete, a college athlete, no matter what, your sport is available to everyone and you really want to take this NIL opportunity serious and you don't want to wait for an agent, you don't want to wait for your school. Um, and even if you want to use NIL as a launch pad for, you know, postgraduate, as we know, not every single athlete is going to go pro. So if you're in high school and college and you're thinking about what does life look like if I want to switch this up or what does life look like if I want to start my own business, this is a perfect platform to engage with, to start putting you into that algorithm of creating content, sharing content, having a personal brand that speaks beyond your athleticism. So that's who I would say this app is for and who that ideal avatar would be.
- [07:08]
A
Awesome. And how are parents involved? Like, you know, my, my 15 year old nephew, could he do this himself or really should his mother be involved?
- [07:17]
C
Yeah, so we, we like to call shout out to the mom managers and the dad managers in the world. That's the term that we coined them. And yeah, this is a high rise of parents who are looking to bring their students athletic business in house and handle it until further notice. And we do welcome parents to come on and utilize the app as marketing support. A lot of Parents understand that the athlete needs to be posting. The athlete is open to posting, but the parent doesn't know what to suggest. The parent is not a marketing degree like myself. So where Tycoon AI again is kind of serving as that marketing strategy that they can have at the access of their fingertips through their cellular device to help their athletes excel in NIO experience. So yes, parents are welcome to utilize the platform and support their athletes as well. So parents, if you're watching again, it's available on the app Store, feel free to grab that app, test it out if you had some ideas that you've had for your student. It is personalized to students and as mentioned earlier, their interests, their hobbies, their sport. So the ideas they get are catered towards that actual student athlete. So it isn't anything like generic or something that would be common if you were to put two different student athlete profiles into the platform.
- [08:27]
A
Peter, that's amazing. Now let me tell you we love some stories. Okay, so tell us about that holy smokes moment where one of your customers actually used Tycoon and it changed everything for them.
- [08:40]
C
Yeah. So we had a student athlete, Tyler Voman, shout out to Tyler, who was formerly at Michigan State University. When we first started working with him, he wasn't as confident and sure as to how he wanted to use social media in his nil journey, if he was even comfortable getting on camera, typically the experience for most athletes. And once he started using this platform, he utilized our AI strategists to give him some TikTok ideas. And the platform took notice that he didn't want to show his face too much. So it gave him some ideas that were still trending, incorporating viral sounds, yet still aligned with his personal brand. And we were able to bring in over 2 million views to his TikTok. And even till this day, he's pursuing a creator journey where he's a bit more of a full time creator now. Um, so this is something that's honestly changed his trajectory as a personal brand, as a creator and obviously an athlete. And this is something that had everybody's jaw dropping and, you know, really, really excited for the impact that the platform was able to make in his social career.
- [09:37]
A
Oh my God, that is amazing. But how does it work? So if we open up the hood of Tycoon and look at the brain, how does it work? How does it know that, you know, Dr. T, who is an athlete and I don't know, whatever, soccer, what I should post and how it's going to go viral and how I'M going to build my brain. How does it know all of that?
- [09:58]
C
Yeah, so as mentioned earlier, like with Tycoon being marketing strategist in your hands, the way it's trained to work is that it takes a combination. It kind of builds a formula to incorporate a few different things. So the first thing that it does is when you onboard to the platform, you would input like your sport, your position, your school, your hometown. And then it also asks you for your hobbies and interests. So it kind of bakes its initial thinking strategy, like based off of that. And then once you actually approach a strategist, it asks you, okay, what content platform are we looking to use here? Do you want to do Instagram? Do you want to do TikTok? And then you would notify the strategist. All right, cool. I want to do TikTok. And then it's going to ask you, what is the goal of this content? Is it for engagement? Is it for reach? Is it for follow? Is it for subscribers? And if an athlete is not familiar with these terminologies, it provides them context on a difference between reach versus engagement. So they can have in the back of their mind, okay, I'm creating this with the goal of building engagement. And then it would prompt for what percentage they would want to enroll whatever metric that is by, and then give them a schedule as to how frequent they would be posting. So it's if you want to build your engagement on Instagram by 10%, then you would be posting about two times a week for about a couple months. And then once the athlete opts into that schedule, then it will provide them content ideas based off that goal, as well as the interest of the athlete and their sports, hometown, school, and then it be personalized in that sense. So again, it's kind of tailored towards each individual student athlete with those factors involved. And every day we're learning new metrics and factors to incorporate into the technology for it to grow its personalization. But that's where it is at the moment.
- [11:42]
A
Okay, now you told us the earlier example. Now I want to ask what we call real world magic. So you're the founder of Tycoon. Tell us about a time where you saw the power of Tycoon AI yourself. And it's like, oh, my God, did I actually create this? Like, I am definitely changing things here. Talk us through that scenario.
- [12:05]
C
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So we had an amazing athlete by the name of Destiny Howard. She was formerly at How University and it's currently on Wisconsin, killing it. Literally up 39 points a couple games ago. So shout out to her. She's doing amazing. But with her, she's one of the athletes that we was testing our pro features with. And that comes with brand partnerships and the merchandise capabilities, making it a full suite experience. And for her, we originally started off with her, as every athlete does, on the marketing aspect. We built her brand, helped her get some content to showcase who she is as an individual out. And then through the platform, she was able to ignite brand partnerships with a local soul food restaurant by the name of Ooze and Oz in D.C. and she was also able to launch merchandise as well. So she was able to do her personal branding, her merchandise and ignite brand partnerships through the platform, which was something that was a big wild moment for us. Granted, we're still tweaking that experience at scale, but at least for her, she was able to benefit from it. Tick multiple boxes off without needing like a third party or anything. Something that we really can't wait to scale across the country and make an experience for thousands of athletes across the nation.
- [13:15]
A
That's amazing. I love me some oohs and ahs. The delivery where I live, it can be a lot. But if I'm ever down near you street, I'm going to pick up some
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C
ooze and
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A
oh my goodness, that is great. Now obviously there are always ethical things to think about, right? So talk to us about how you and your leadership team thinks about ethics. Guard rails in, in terms of building it, in terms of developing it. Talk to us about that. What are your stance on, on this ethical crossroads?
- [13:49]
C
Yeah, so ethics is something that's very important and key on our team. When it comes from our technology and our. In terms of our terms and condition, we're very transparent on how we utilize information. We don't sell the information or misuse it in any way. In addition to that, we don't necessarily rely on AI fully as it relates to like the marketing strategy portion of it. I'm very hands on with making sure that we are active in training AI. Teaching the AI. In most cases, AI is built by individuals that don't look like us. So we're in a fortunate position to be obviously people of color and training AI how we think, you know, terminologies to use, things that we don't say, content ideas that align with the student athletes that will be on a platform versus not. And something that we're very, very intentional about. Some, from an ethics standpoint is very important that we're not necessarily like relying on AI but working hand in hand and collaborating with the AI to make sure that there are some guardrails as it relates to thin line and ethics and the transparency that we want to make sure that it's consistent throughout our technology build out. So those are some of the things that we're doing at the moment.
- [14:59]
A
Yep. Awesome. I love that. Keep the customer first and keep that in there and be like you said, transparent about it upfront about what it can and can't do and all of that. What does the future with Tycoon AI look like? What is the big future of Tycoon AI?
- [15:17]
C
Yeah, I think the future of Tycoon AI is going to be a few things. The future of Tycoon AI A is going to be a platform that hopefully student athletes coming into high school already know. Like listen, if you're trying to get to this bag, we you need to get on Tycoon AI as early as possible. It's going to be a marketing agency without needing a physical contact early on. In addition to that, we'll also be open to the creator community as well. So if you it will be a world where you don't necessarily have to be an athlete. An individual like a Dr. T who wants to build their personal brand and maybe can't afford a full time marketing agency or full time human marketing strategist can lean on Tycoon AI as an area of support when it comes to ideation and strategy. And that's what we see the future being like everyone who was serious about growing their personal brand and maximizing not just nil, but the creator business as a whole, having Tycoon AI in their arsenal as a tool to help keep their brand strong and sustainable.
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A
Awesome. I love that. The World power by tycoon A.I. that's great. Exactly. Give us a call to action if we want to try it out this week. Today's Thursday, so if you want to try it out, if people want to try it out this week, what can they do? Where do they go?
- [16:34]
C
How do they get started? If you're a parent of a student athlete, if you're a student athlete yourself, if you're considering walking on into a sports team and you are looking to maximize this name, image and likeness opportunity. In my experience, I've seen and managed thousands of dollars of brand partnerships so I can speak to his impact. This can help pay that next bill. This can help buy that car. This can help do something for moms on Valentine's Day on her birthday. What I would recommend doing is going to the app Store Going to Google store downloading Tycoon AI that is T Y K double O n space AI. You should see a orange and white logo and you're on the right app. And then once you hit that install button, you have made one of the best decisions of 226. You're going to sign up and then you're going to engage with the platform. And one thing that I like to make clear here is that this is not an atm, right? I'm not making any guarantee that you're going to sign up and then cash is going to start flowing, things are going to move as fast as you do, right? So this is something that you want to make a part of your routine, a part of your schedule. Whether it's Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays is the days that you go into Tycoon AI, get your content ideas, create the content, track your progress, create merchandise, engage with some of the other features. These are the factors that are going to play into the results that you see. So that would be my call to action. And my second call to action would be help a friend, right? You might not be a parent of a student athlete, you might not be a student of yourself, but I'm sure you know one. I'm sure your sister, your cousin, the nephew, your neighbor might have the student athlete, and that might be the next LeBron James, right? So you never know who could be impacted with you sparking this conversation if it's not yourself. So I would challenge you two to five people if you can get to check out the app. You've made the world a better place. So that's my call to action. I appreciate you as you do.
- [18:23]
A
So awesome. Y' all heard it here. Go and download Tycoon T Y K O N A I, um. So obviously you are a genius because you're on this podcast and because of all the wonderful things you're doing. So our last genius, who was a guest, has a question for you, Peter, and that is, if AI in 2026 makes life more efficient, but people feel more disconnected, more isolated, or dependent, will we call that progress or is that design failure?
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C
I said a question one more time. I heard it, but I want to hear it so I can answer it the way I think I have, and I'll go slower.
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A
If AI in 2026 makes life better, makes it more efficient, but then people end up being disconnected, isolated, or dependent on AI, is that progress or is that failure?
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C
It depends. It depends. It depends. You going to get different answers? I think. I don't know. That's a hard question. It's a hard question because it depends on the scale that life is better ways compared to the dependency on the AI. And it also depends on to what extent of dependency it is. Right? If it's like revenue generating tasks and is generating revenue and it's working, I feel like it depends, it depends on how dependent and dependent on what exactly? Because there are certain things that AI can't do. AI can't cook and AI can't drive a car. AI can't tell you why you're sick, you still have to go to the doctor. So to me it depends on how far we're talking about. But if it's to the point where you can't have articulate conversations like this and you can't talk about something that you should know about by heart, I. E. Like your business or the problem you're looking to solve, that's where you start rolling into a problem where it's design failure. I guess, I guess that's kind of where it is because, because again the way you said the question is like life is better, so life is better. So life is better can mean a lot of more money in your pocket. It can mean a lot of different things. So depending on, on how that weighs out to each other, I think, I think that's, that's kind of how that question will be answered. So that's kind of why it's a trick question. So it depends, but I guess to personalize it to myself, I mean, listen, if life is good, life is good. I, I think I have a good balance and a good way of balancing like AI usage to where I'm not dependent on it. So I guess that then switches the question up. But listen, if I get to a situation where I figure out how to use AI and we're making millions of dollars, then we're going to use that AI and make some millions of dollars.
- [21:10]
A
Okay, I love that. And I also tell people you always are going to need a human in the room. And if you really think about it, and I was thinking about this as you were answering it, if you feel, you know, dependent on it, then there's always, I'm sure an AI that will help with that or isolated, there's an AI to help with that. So it's, yeah, benefits, so that's good.
- [21:28]
C
And the thing I was going to say as well on that note is, I think as well, like as I was saying earlier when you were asking me about like the ethics and everything, like, I think it's Important that people aim to collaborate with AI as opposed to depend on it. I think I do a lot of AI collaboration versus anything else. So I think that's why I can confidently say that I'm somewhere in the middle. Because I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I think there is a world where you can collaborate with AI. Turn it off. No one to use your brain. Challenge yourself if you're using it too much. I think there, there is a balance to. Whereas though you're not like just completely dependent on it. So I think that's kind of what I would recommend to the listeners.
- [22:07]
A
Yep, absolutely. I love that. All right, so now we're going to go into bonus rapid fire. I'm going to quickly give you four questions. You give me the first thing that comes to mind. Ready? Rapid. Most overrated tech trend,
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C
like AI pictures and videos.
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A
All right.
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C
I think it's overrated. I think we're just doing too much. Like, I feel like people think that is unrecognizable. Like, I feel like there's a certain demographic of people, like, respectfully, like, like, you know, the, the millennials and over. I'm Gen Z, so whatever. But like, I just feel like they may not catch it, but like it's not, it's not as disguisable as people think, you know, So I feel like it's just over. Like people just doing too much and it's just overrated in that sense. Sense.
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A
Like, yeah, no, I get it. What about the most underrated tech trend?
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C
Email, Like AI email marketing. I think a lot of people are not utilizing it enough. A lot of code outreach, a lot of code emails is something that plays a role in my business day to day and should be playing a role in a lot of business owners day to day. I mean, I think it's a. Is a very much underutilized and under hyped AI tool that a lot of people need to incorporate into their arsenal a bit more.
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A
All right, a book we should all read.
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C
I think this book, 0 to 1.
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A
0 to 1.
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C
It's a book that I think every entrepreneur should read. It's about startups and a lot of things that you should take note of, especially like in your early stages. So like in my early stage of business, it's been a book that's been very helpful and insightful. So I would definitely recommend readers from
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A
Zero to one, everybody, y' all got it. And lastly, Scare us. Wow us. What's your biggest, boldest AI prediction?
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C
Yeah, I do think that we're gonna get to a point where we have like AI, like waiters. And like I do, I do think there's like human jobs that we don't think they're gonna take that they are gonna take like waiters. Yeah. I do think like you're gonna walk into the restaurant and like 5 to 10 years and like a waiter is going to be like serving you your food and it's probably going to be like a touch screen robot in their stomach. And like you just put your food in the stomach, they go get it, come back. Like I can see like the whole thing. It's probably going to be like chefs and robots.
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A
Right. I love that. Well, Peter, thank you so much for being on here. We appreciate you. Everybody go out download Tycoon AI so we can discover all these student athletes. So thank you again so much. I enjoyed this conversation.
- [24:41]
C
Thank you so much. This was amazing.
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A
Awesome.
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B
Thanks for tuning in to lead with AI. I'll see you next time as we continue exploring the cutting edge innovations shaping AI across the public and private sectors. Until then, keep leading with AI.