BackGate eliminates the wait at the gate.
Equestrian shows are able to deliver services digitally via a patent pending app.
No more paper and standing in line
if you show you know…
The App That Solves The Pain
Transparency of back gate status. Everyone knows in real-time when they need to come up to the back gate. This empowers social distancing. Imagine if everyone knew their spot and didn’t have to go to the back gate to ask “when do I go?”
Now imagine if you are using the same technology Toyota uses to manage its supply chain, something called a Kanban board. Kanban boards are a visual drag and drop way to manage cards.
No more having to walk to the office in order to add/scratch your students. Do everything from your phone and keep safe. You can have all of the new required COVID-19 regulation paperwork in one place.
Easily handle stalls, feed/bedding, show docs, and RV spots from your phone. With COVID-19 everything is now easy to do through your phone with BackGate.
As a show dad, I never knew when my daughter was supposed to compete, where the ring was, the class time, what my daughter placed, etc. BackGate puts all of this information in your phone, finally!
Exhibitors- now you can see how you pinned on your phone. In addition, you can sign up, add/scratch, see your order of go, see horses for sale at the show, have the horse profile, barn profile, and team profile all in your phone.
No more standing in line at the office to check in, add, scratch, or check out. Everything is now done digitally through a mobile first app. This new capability is helping county health officials feel more comfortable allowing horse shows to re-open.
No brand can develop without word of mouth. We will soon introduce our patent-pending influencer platform that powers word of mouth at the grassroots level. This marketplace platform allows brands to build networks of successful athletes and social network influencers, at scale.
Brands have complained for years that there is no good way to get a grassroots way to build word of mouth. Word of mouth has always been the holy grail for any brand and yet it has been essentially random chance which brands take off and which fail to generate escape velocity in buzz. We believe the difference is in a few key factors, factors which will be revealed within the patent pending platform very soon.
Influencers and this new category of marketing works, and is gaining momentum like a steam locamotive. Ask any person under 30 what influenced their decision to buy or do, well anything, and check the result. This is the core idea behind a powerful backend powering a marketplace that connects brands and their future brand ambassadors/influencers.
We feel it is important to do this at the grassroots level vs. sponsoring professional and big-name athletes. When sponsoring big professionals, the money is just too large to trace results in a granular way. But we came up with a way to give brands a traceable, auditable, and far less expensive way to get many groups talking all over the country at once spread across hundreds of friend networks.
What Back Gate Says
What people are saying
We are looking to get feedback from the community which will help us improve the app. Drop us a line if you would like to give us some feedback. dconlan@back-gate.com
What is next
What you see in today’s version of the app is just the beginning. We are working on a robust roadmap of really cool things we have learned the equine community has wanted for years. One is a full performance and pedigree history of horses for sale.
As a horse parent myself, it’s good to know the full background and history behind the horse so I know how to work with the horse going forward. We will be releasing new functionality on a rolling basis. We hope you like them. But if you don’t please tell us.
About Us
This company was founded on one horse named Ellie. She is a rescue horse who changed everything for us. She showed us that a horse, covered in mud, bloody and torn, skittish and scared, with just a little love and attention became the funniest, smartest, and most loving member of our family one could ever imagine. How many other horses like her were losing the right to live and how do we stop this? Out of that question, this company was born.
Once we landed on a horse social network to intercept the horses before slaughter, we needed to solve a real problem in order to get adoption of the network. Well, here’s a big problem! Paying $4,000-$10,000 for a horse show and never knowing what is going on at that horse show is most definitely a quantifiable pain. Most of the confusion is driven by the chaos created when no one has an accurate idea of where they stand in the order of go at the gate. Delays are hidden to the competitors unless they stand within earshot of the back gate manager and their loudspeaker.
Meanwhile the back gate managers feel like they have to answer the same questions over and over for 12 hours with no break. They feel like they are herding cats all day long. Wouldn’t it be so much more pleasant if what they were doing at the back gate was visible real time to everyone at the show (and to the moms and dads who couldn’t make it).
We think that if we build something which solves real pain for the community then we have a shot at building that social network for the 31% of American households which self-identify as love horses. If we do that, then enough people across the country will be connected in a web of advanced knowledge of at risk horses. Then we stop those horses from being shipped to their certain death.
We are staging our revenue models.
1. The first stage is barn subscriptions. Barn subscriptions allows trainers to see at a glance the schedule, status, and scores of all of their students in their phone, as well as all critical information about their horses. No there is much money here but it’s enough to fund the next stage.
2. The second stage is marketplace. This is badly needed. Picture an equine focused “craiglist” for people who show and love horses. You’ll see this released in about a month. Again, not a huge amount of money here but it’s additive towards the big revenue.
We may expand to other sports where parents and competitors “wait around, frustrated.” Some of these are: volleyball tournaments, track meets, swim meets, ski racing, etc.
3. The last stage is micro-sponsorships. This is what excites us the most. This new category called Paleo-Marketing™ is like our modern diets. Modern advertising techniques are harmful and ineffective. We are yelled at by strangers on the TV, radio, etc. with pop ups invading our lives at every turn. We are even accosted on services we pay for. But we put up with it because there’s nothing better.
The core of our micro-sponsorship platform is social currency. People share things which make them look good to others. This is the coattail we use to drive positive word of mouth for brands at scale. We all wonder how certain brands seem to blow up out of nowhere. It’s through this mass word of mouth phenomenon, What if one could reliably replicate the ability to make a brand go viral and “blow up?”
If it works, it will create a multi-billion segment within the $580B advertising segment. We believe we’ve built that model. It was under patent pending well before California’s new law: Fair Pay to Play Act signed into law Oct 2019. That law was a gift from the heavens for us. When the law goes into effect, we’ll be the only patented marketplace for micro-sponsorships for athletes across America. We are creating a brand new category in marketing.
For more information on Fair Pay to Play Act: https://www.si.com/college/2019/09/30/fair-pay-to-play-act-law-ncaa-california-pac-12
We are playing for global domination and disruption in marketing by introducing a brand new, repeatable way to drive positive grass roots word of mouth, at scale.
We will kill off traditional “media buy” marketing, and not a moment too soon for all of us. The average person is exposed to 5,000 ads per day. This is crazy. Word of mouth is really the only reliable way to get anyone to do anything…
Try this fun experiment. Without reaching for your phone, name more than 6 friends from memory. Wasn’t that weird? Google “groups of friends” and 5 to 6 people keep showing up. The sitcom “Friends” has 6 friends in it. This is because we are still a blink of time from 70,000 years of tribal living. Modern advertising completely misses this. There are 380M Americans, plus/minus. Divide that by 5 or 6 and those are the number of friend groups, or “tribes” running around the country. Secure one person in each tribe, and you get to do some interesting stuff, quickly and at scale. That’s the secret of what we’ve built.
Since it has come up, we’ll be clear; we do not consider ourselves a “show management” company and have no interest in chasing that. There is not enough money to be had.
We’ll let the existing companies continue that rock fight.
Instead, we are building a $Billion company, but starting with a specific niche. Which niche? We are fixing some long standing problems for the most affluent group in the world. Why start there? For the same reason Facebook started with Harvard and then Yale, and so on. It’s social currency. Everyone looks up.
Many other sports suffer the same problem: “I am tired of waiting, does anyone here know what’s going on?” Many sports have this problem, but this problem is really acute in equestrian showing. Besides, my daughter shows so she and I live the problem every weekend.
•We have a patent pending on the only system to automate NCAA sponsorships.
The main revenue model of backGate™ is something we affectionately call “paleo-marketing.” The basic concept of Paleo-marketing is rather simple. for the last 100,000 years of human existence, we have efficiently made our daily decisions from asking our “tribe” about what, in their experience, has proven successful for them. Today, we haven’t lost this innate trait. When was the last time you saw a movie without first asking your friends what they recommend? Or have you ever bought a car without first asking your friends what they thought? Dating? Restaurants? Travel?
This concept of word of mouth is the holy grail of marketing. No brand can succeed without word of mouth driving it. Yet, to date, there has been no reliable or repeatable way to create a ground swell of word of mouth. How can a brand get many people in many different friend groups across the world, to say good things about the brand, at the same time?
We have come up with a way to do this, and you will soon see a new method for driving positive word of mouth for your brand, at scale. We call it micro-sponsorship for lack of a better description. There is no description for this because we’re creating a brand new category.
It just so turns out that some time after we filed our patents, California’s governor Gavin Newsom signed into law SB 206: Fair Play to Pay Act. This new law allows for NCAA athletes to be directly sponsored by corporations. Following this, the NCAA then adopted this country wide. This new law comes into effect in 2022, and we’re the only company (that our patent firm could identify) with USPTO protection of a marketplace to allow corporations to efficiently canvas and sponsor thousands of athletes across the country. Imagine thousands of successful athletes driving market awareness of new brands, at a grass roots level. Moreover, how effective each athlete is at driving awareness is directly measurable through our patent pending system.
We need to end the shipment of horses to slaughter. Congress is trying to pass the SAFE act but it’s stalled because “where are you going to put all the horses?” We have that answer in LifeSaving Fertilizer™ ranches, but we need to get the network in place first.
We need a network to intercept at risk horses before they are sent to the kill pens, and then get them into LifeSaver Fertilizer ranches where their manure can used to make organic fertilizer. Meanwhile, chemical fertilizers are known an established and proven carcinogen, that we already know. However we’re now finding out that they are also causing insulin resistance ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
Insulin is the hormone that causes fat production. Insulin resistance = obesity. So in effect, by saving our horses, their organic fertilizer can in turn keep us thin and save our lives. And in order to do save them (and us), we need to create a social network for all horse lovers so that we have real time knowledge of at risk horses before they are sent to slaughter. Without the network to intercept the at risk horses before they end up in the kill pens, then we’re simply buying the horses from the kill pens and putting gasoline on the fire.
In order to create a social network for this cause, we need to be of use. In order to be of use, we need to fix some vexing problems for horse lovers.
The BackGate comes up consistently as the #1 offender for anyone who shows. #2 Buying horses sight unseen or outside of seeing them at shows. #3 The stupid amounts of money which needs to be spent in order to show.
I recently overheard a saying: “if you’re a billionaire, and you have a daughter, she’s with her horses at the show.” We’re fixing all three. Why? because there’s another saying: “lawyers, rehab, or horses….pick one dad.”
There is a huge problem with the abuse of our data in the world today. There is also a constant abuse of our senses by marketers today. We are yelled at, called at home, called on our cell phone, interrupted on the web, interrupted when watching a movie (which we paid to see), cable (which we paid to use), radio, satalite radio (which we paid to use), and on and on and on. And does being acosted cause you to rush off to buy their stuff? Me neither.
Therefore, BackGate is introducing a completely different kind of marketing called paleo-marketing™ (patent pending). You will see this come to light here shortly as we iron out the testing phase of the app. But in short, your data is yours – you made it, it should be copyrighted to you, and you should be paid if companies use it.
Your word of mouth is also very powerful. Some people have more influence than others. More will be revealed later.
Contact Us
Drop Us a Line. Do you have any idea or want to share your feedback? Don’t hesitate to fill the form.
Our Team
This is the team of people who support this vision. Every individual in the team is in the top 1% best in the world in their profession. They represent literally the pinnacle of accomplishment for their expertise. Every one of them is dedicated to this mission and are committed to building a network for saving horses
from slaughter.
As one might imagine, getting behind a concept like this is not rocket science. They are excited for two reasons: one, saving 100,000 horses a year makes for pretty solid heaven credits and two, the revenue model is logical and novel in ways which may lend to rapid adoption. We don’t know…we’ll have to see.
I’m funding this until then. Here’s the team in no particular order other than who joined when.
I’m helping by creating the revenue models, funding the venture, I filed the patents and trademarks, formed the company, am creating the app, and am signing up the largest horse show facilities and show management companies in North America as well as brands for the micro-sponsorships which will be introduced in a bit. I’m driven to solve two vexing problems.
Andrea is excited about BackGate because of the 30 years she has been a trainer she has seen little technical improvement to help the people performing a crucial role in horse showing.
Blair started riding as soon as she could walk. It is her life obsession. She rides from 2-8 horses per day and has rescued two horses. The idea for the greater mission of BackGate came from her question, “how come we can’t rescue all of the horses?”
With BackGate emerging into the equestrian market, she is excited about the potential of a product that can eliminate so many of the daily frustrations and headaches that often deter parents and new riders from sticking with the sport for the long term. Lauren feels that addressing these issues is the key to growing the sport and providing parents with an avenue where they feel confident in investing in their child’s riding career.
Skyler is excited about BackGate because it offers show management personnel an additional option to increase customer satisfaction for show exhibitors. When Skyler saw BackGate, he saw the possibilities of reshaping the customer’s experience in a brand new way.
Alexa is excited about BackGate because she sees equestrian sports as one of the few sports not dominated by men. She feels that this sport has the opportunity to empower young women to build confidence, overcome obstacles, and build responsibility.
David is excited about BackGate because he sees the enormous potential of the primary business model of BackGate, the micro-sponsorships. He has seen the gradual degradation of the effectiveness of marketing and sees room for a different method. He believes BackGate’s patent-pending method could be that groundbreaking billion-dollar breakout.
Perry is a fellow “horse dad” and has seen the frustrations his daughters have had with not knowing what’s going on at shows. He is also excited to see how BackGate’s new micro-sponsorship marketing model develops. He is excited to see how BackGate can walk a brand “into the kitchen” of their target market.
Dan is excited by the possibilities of BackGate’s new micro-sponsorship revenue model. He feels this model may fundamentally change the way high-end brands reach their markets, thus effecting a portion of the $546 Billion global advertising spend done today.
Archie is one of the top equestrian trainers in the world and is known as the “trainer to the stars.” Archie is excited about BackGate due his ability to see the vision of saving horses through improving the lives of his clients and his team. He sees a future of a horse social network for the 31% of Americans who self identify as horse lovers. We are very lucky to have him as part of the board.
1. The slaughter of horses here in the United States. Perfectly good horses are being abandoned by their “owners” (We rescued Ellie and she was the nicest gentlest horse ever).
Congress has introduced the SAFE act which will ban all horse slaughter in the U.S. including the transporting of the horses out of the country. One of the reasons this hasn’t yet passed is “where are you going to put all those horses?” Meanwhile, conventional pesticides and fertilizers are now known & proven carcinogens. What if we could save all the horses and turn their manure into organic fertilizer? In other words, we can get back to a time like we used to have 150 years ago. A time when we all felt strong, and 39% of our country was NOT obese. Today we’re sick and tired all the time. And obesity is not calories, it’s the chemicals we’re ingesting. Imagine if we could save the lives of horses who in turn save our lives? This is real. It can happen. And yes, we are going to save all 100,000 horses per year who, every day, are being dismembered (sometimes still alive) for who knows what.
However, if we go to the kill pens to save the horses, we’re supporting the kill pens. We need to intercept the at-risk horses before they end up in the kill pens. We need to starve the kill pens of supply.
In order to do that, we need to create a social network for all horse lovers.
In order to do that, we need to be useful. We need to solve an immediate and obvious pain. This led to the second vexing problem.
2. The back gate is the source of tremendous stress and chaos for both the back-gate people trying to herd cats, and for the riders who most of the time have no idea what’s happening (the food of fear is confusion). Entering a ring full of fear does no one any good. I won’t even get started with the parents. I never know what’s happening at shows. I’ve spoken with parents who throw in the towel because they can’t take it anymore. We’re not going to grow the sport like this. An old salt once told me “Lawyers, rehab, or horses…pick one dad.”
So, we’re fixing the back-gate issue first so that we can be of use to the community, and then we’re going to tackle the other issues as we get traction. Then we will introduce the micro-sponsorships (the embodiment of Paleo-Marketing ) for the revenue model. Then we use this horse network and the profits, and we pour everything into saving the horses and creating LifeSaver Fertilizer ranches.
What you see in the app is patent pending.
In 1985 Andrea helped established and manage Elvenstar Riding Academy, a now nationally recognized and awarded Riding Program and Hunter/Jumper Show Barn whose achievements have been featured in Practical Horseman, Hunter/Jumper Magazine, Show Circuit, Chronicle of the Horse, and many others.
With Andrea’s efforts and knowledge Elvenstar has become one of the largest, premier, and sought after Riding Academies in the country.
Andrea is excited about BackGate because of the 30 years she has been a trainer she has seen little technical improvement to help the people performing a crucial role in horse showing.
The back gate fall into two camps, the first recognizes the challenges but are resistant to change, the other camp recognizes the challenges and want a different solution to paper, especially on windy days. We hope we offer something to both camps. The demographic who shows are all extremely wealthy people and these people need a way to have control over their time when showing.
Blair is currently Champion and Reserve Champion in Northern California for Hunter 12 & Under, and she is Reserve Champion for Equitation in Northern California.
Blair started riding as soon as she could walk. It is her life obsession. She rides from 2-8 horses per day and has rescued two horses. The idea for the greater mission of BackGate came from her question, “how come we can’t rescue all of the horses?”
Her dad started working on that problem, and this company was born. The primary future revenue model comes from her experience with influencers and social media.
Blair is excited about BackGate because she has suffered trying to keep her nervous horses still while not forgetting her course. She concluded that by not forcing her horses to congregate among nonfamiliar horses for long periods, she improves her win rate. This theory has been proven accurate. She believes those who use BackGate will win over those who do not use it.
As for the revenue model, she believes there is an opportunity to merge the successes of YouTube influencers and sports sponsorships, and thus the micro-sponsorship method was born.
Falling in love with showjumping as a junior rider, Lauren turned her passion into her profession after graduating from UC Davis in 2005.
Lauren currently manages all administrative duties for the Northern California Hunter Jumper Association as well as the Sacramento Area Hunter Jumper Association. She can also be found behind the desk in many horse show offices throughout California, handling the complex and sensitive duties that often fall hand in hand with horse show production.
Lauren believes the key to the growth of the horse show industry is keeping exhibitors, trainers and parents educated, connected and informed at the level other industries are evolving in today’s digital world.
With BackGate emerging into the equestrian market, she is excited about the potential of a product that can eliminate so many of the daily frustrations and headaches that often deter parents and new riders from sticking with the sport for the long term. Lauren feels that addressing these issues is the key to growing the sport and providing parents with an avenue where they feel confident in investing in their child’s riding career.
Starting as a back gate Skyler quickly developed his equestrian role into show operations at the largest horse show facilities in North America. He handles highly complex logistics for The Desert International Horse Park in Thermal CA, Thunderbird Show Park in Canada, and other Premiere rated facilities on the West Coast.
With Skyler’s management influence, these gigantic horse show facilities operate like clockwork which is an enormous undertaking.
Skyler is excited about BackGate because it offers show management personnel an additional option to increase customer satisfaction for show exhibitors. When Skyler saw BackGate, he saw the possibilities of reshaping the customer’s experience in a brand new way.
Alexa is a brand marketing powerhouse. She brings extensive brand building experience from Aston Martin, Mercedes-Benz USA, and Luis Vuitton. Her experience spans Brand Events Oversight, Digital Event Marketing, media buying, marketing analytics, social media. She is guiding our micro-sponsorship model and is helping us build our brand the correct way the first time.
Alexa is excited about BackGate because she sees equestrian sports as one of the few sports not dominated by men. She feels that this sport has the opportunity to empower young women to build confidence, overcome obstacles, and build responsibility.
In addition, she sees the equestrian market as a very good avenue for reaching her target market. Many other brands would be excited to reach this market as well. This platform offers them the ability to create a direct one to one relationship with riders and their families.
A graduate of Art Center School of Design in Transportation Design, David Townsend is Chief Designer for Data and AI at IBM. David won the prestigious 2018 iF Award for Best UX and with the 2017 Red Dot Award for Best UX/UI. Currently, as Head of Design for Integrated Cloud Platform (ICP for Data), he is responsible for creating a unified analytics platform that provides a complete, end-to-end solution for all of your data.
Before coming to IBM, David was responsible for GM’s entire global portfolio and all things Digital/Physical and UI/UX within the vehicle, including Autonomous levels 2 & 3 along with Super Cruise systems.
David built Samsung’s North America studio created the Galaxy S, an instant worldwide success, which lead to the number one selling series of smartphones in the world. At Motorola, David designed the iconic Motorola NFL coach’s headsets.
David’s first job out of Art Center was at Toyota, working on an emerging automotive program that we now know as the Lexus Brand.
David is excited about BackGate because he sees the enormous potential of the primary business model of BackGate, the micro-sponsorships. He has seen the gradual degradation of the effectiveness of marketing and sees room for a different method. He believes BackGate’s patent-pending method could be that groundbreaking billion-dollar breakout.
Perry’s experience includes: General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of Medable, Inc., Vice President & General Manager, Rackspace Managed Security, where he was responsible for building and leading marketing, technical sales, product development, and service delivery, and security at Rackspace. He managed the Rackspace P&L with responsibility for revenue growth and profitability.
Perry is a fellow “horse dad” and has seen the frustrations his daughters have had with not knowing what’s going on at shows. He is also excited to see how BackGate’s new micro-sponsorship marketing model develops. He is excited to see how BackGate can walk a brand “into the kitchen” of their target market.
Dan is mostly retired after a very successful run including a stint as CFO of Ducati North America and then as Tesla’s Director of Finance as Elon was joining the company.
Dan is helping and advising on building the right financial models and forecasting for the pending capital raise for BackGate.
Dan is excited by the possibilities of BackGate’s new micro-sponsorship revenue model. He feels this model may fundamentally change the way high-end brands reach their markets, thus effecting a portion of the $546 Billion global advertising spend done today.
He owns Brookway Stables located in Los Angeles and shows across the United States. His clients consistently win across the board and he reliably delivers results. He has unique access to the very best horses in the world, access most other trainers just can’t get. His connections and experience brings immense value and wisdom to the needs of BackGate.
