InXAthlete co-founders Cody Ferraro ’15 ’15G (left) and Max Wessell ’16 are pictured in Colorado where their business that connects student-athletes with potential employers is located.
When student-athletes Cody Ferraro ’15 ’15G and Max Wessell ’16 met freshmen year, they did not automatically hit it off. Ferraro, a lacrosse player who majored in history and later enrolled in the educational technology master’s program, and Wessell, a wrestler who majored in marketing, were very different.
When they realized, in their shared international relations class, they were the only freshmen in a room of seniors, they quickly decided they needed to band together. Their partnership stuck and continues as co-founders of InXAthlete, a company dedicated to connecting student-athletes with employers. Currently, the InXAthlete platform is providing opportunities for student-athletes from more than 70 universities as well as providing 60+ businesses with top student-athlete talent.
The road from playing varsity sports at Lehigh to helping student-athletes with their job search is a storied one.
Max Wessell ’16 (left) and Cody Ferraro ’15 ’15G, co-founders of InXAthlete, were among alumni who spoke at Lehigh’s Startup Nation, a professional alliance alumni event held in Denver on November 7, 2018. The event focused on how the Lehigh community is successfully navigating the entrepreneurial landscape.
While playing lacrosse his senior year, Ferraro tore his ACL and sat out the season. Since student-athletes are eligible to play four years of varsity sports, the NCAA rule allows a student continuing their education in a graduate degree program to play their fourth year of varsity sports during their fifth year of college. However, after returning to the field during his fifth year, Ferraro injured his wrist.
Without being able to play a varsity sport, Ferraro had a wake-up moment, “While playing lacrosse during my fifth year at Lehigh, I was earning my master’s degree in educational technology. I injured my wrist and came to the realization that I would have to look for a post collegiate athletics career. I thought I would have this whole season to play lacrosse and pay attention to what was in front of me.”
It was this struggle to look for jobs that gave birth to the idea for a platform that connected student-athletes with employers, which later became their company InXAthlete.
Currently, InXAthlete provides a platform that easily offers student-athletes options to find potential employers, in addition to providing employers with a database of student-athletes looking for opportunities.
“I always had the idea I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” Ferraro said. “While at Lehigh, I wanted to compete, build relationships, and be a good person. That is something our coach, Kevin Cassese, taught constantly. During my experience with Lehigh lacrosse, I became a problem solver, which translates directly to being an entrepreneur.”
Ferraro was rooming with Wessell when he approached him with this idea for the company.
“Cody came up to me with the idea of connecting student-athletes with companies, and it really resonated with me. We had both thought of what we were going to do after college, but there was nothing concrete,” Wessell said.
It is difficult for student-athletes to obtain job experience since they have a large commitment to their sports.
“We didn’t have time within our sport to pursue internships. Max and I were training during the summer. We couldn’t interview for jobs on campus because the Career Fair was during our practice time,” Ferraro said.
Wessell and Ferraro hoped to rectify this problem by creating a service where companies can connect to student-athletes specifically. To make their vision happen, they needed help — a cross-disciplinary component was needed to fulfill the idea. Although the two of them have experience in technology and business, they lacked the computer programming skills to create the platform. To do so, they contracted Lehigh graduate students in the areas they needed support from, mostly to build the base code to get the company off the ground.
To earn extra money to pay for the freelance staff, Wessell ran wrestling clinics while Ferraro operated security at Molly’s Irish Grill in South Bethlehem.
After graduation, Wessell moved home to Colorado while Ferraro worked on Long Island. It wasn’t until they both saved up enough money and received an investment that Ferraro moved to Colorado and started the business with Wessell. They remain close business partners and, more importantly, great friends.
“We remain in business together, because we work very well together. We both know what we are good at and not good at, and our skill sets complement each other,” Wessell said. “We have a friendship formed from being Lehigh student-athletes and are both passionate for helping student-athletes find employment. That passion keeps up while working toward the same goal and working together as business partners.”