Guardian Athletics

We love football. Like you, we’re concerned about the future of the game. Bottom line? We need to do a better job of keeping athletes safe.There are better ways to protect football players against head and neck injuries — including concussions — through a combination of improved protective gear, training, and innovation. We designed Kato Collar to slow down the head after impact while at the same time providing a discreet, lightweight design that allows players to move freely.

Raised $1M in initial funding round
2 fully executed utility patents (US 9,888,732B2 and US 8,898,822B2)
Over 60 colleges and 7 NFL teams have Kato Collar in their equipment room
Innovation grant from the Department of Economic and Employment Division
Nearly 1,000 collars on the football field including NFL teams, and NCAA FBS and FCS teams including former National Champion, Clemson.
Semi-finalist in the 2020 Pepperdine Most Fundable Companies Competition (Top 100 of over 4500 companies entered in the competition)
2019 Runner up MN Cup entrepreneur competition
2018 Mankato Million Cups business of the Year
2019 Angel Tax Certification by the State of Minnesota

• Compensation for Managers
• Bio Mechanical Testing
• Medical Board
• Debt Repayment
• Marketing Blitz
• Intermediary Fees

Jeff Chambers
Founder
Jeff has been a Certified Athletic Trainer for 35 years, serving most recently as the Head Athletic Trainer at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Throughout his career he has been responsible for the health and care of each university’s football team, resulting in a wealth of experience working with a number of athletes who experienced concussions and repeated burners and stingers that prevented them from playing at their peak performance. After not being able to find safety gear to prevent these injuries, he developed the Kato Collar. He created Guardian Athletics and has spent the past 10 years researching, developing, and field-testing versions of the company’s flagship product. Jeff holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education (Secondary Education) and Certification in Athletic Training from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He has a Master’s degree in Physical Education with an emphasis in Sports Medicine from the University of Northern Colorado.

Dave Norris
CEO
In 2017, Dave became our first full-time employee. Combining corporate models, his sole-proprietorship role, he has been able to lay the groundwork for our business and lead us to a scalable model. His responsibilities are broad, with a specific focus on processes and mechanisms that are put into place from our starting point to managing our product development, technology capabilities, financial responsibilities, and investor relations, and fulfillment process for our sales channels. At the end of the day, he's the glue that holds all of our pieces together and keeps all members of the Guardian team lock-step with our business ambitions.

Todd Tanhoff
Sales
In his role in Sales, Todd is responsible for all steps of the sales process, collaborating these efforts with marketing and operations, and ensuring we have strong relationships with all levels of the football industry, from small-town booster clubs to NFL teams. He develops the distribution channels with our customer marketing tactics to bring in new leads and ensure we are hitting our sales ambitions while also advocating for a safer game.

Zeb Carlson
Marketing
Zeb oversees the various marketing efforts related to the growth of the brand. In addition to channel marketing, he also works with a variety of football communities to influence how to support future innovation, as well as overseeing PR efforts. In his career, he’s worked on a variety of brands such as Red Bull, General Mills, Microsoft, and Target as well as a number of start-ups.

Ben Bowman
Finance
Ben has decades of experience leading companies through all stages of growth and renewal. He is especially respected for his ability to apply lean startup methodologies to fast growing companies. Ben currently leads the strategy and business development at Geneticure, an early stage biotechnology company. He also serves as an industry advisor to the University of Minnesota technology transfer office. In his previous venture, General Blood, Ben created a national market for donated human blood through the use of a dynamic and novel online exchange. Ben has assisted dozens of emerging companies on establishment, launch and scale.

Daryl Pilarski
Engineering and Design
Daryl is a product development engineering professional with over 25 years of ingenuity, engineering and management experience, and he has been instrumental in providing the technical leadership needed to develop our product.

Price per Share: $2.00