Former sports executive teams with startup veteran to simplify visa process for foreign athletes

After 16 years handling immigration visas for the Kansas City Royals, Kyle Vena knew there must be a better way to streamline the daunting task of bringing athletes to the U.S. to play baseball — and keeping them, he shared.

“When I left [the job] in the summer of 2022, I had this concept baked in my head of how we could do the process better,” the former Royals executive explained. “There’s a lot of pain points that club administrators have to deal with. How could we just make it a more automated and cohesive process?”

Vena’s good friend Chris Cheatham — the co-founder of Overland Park-based Stat Legend, as well as the CEO of RiskGenius before it exited — suggested Vena pitch the idea to Stuart Ludlow — co-founder of RFP360, a Leawood-based software-as-a-service startup that was acquired by an Oregon-based competitor RFPIO in 2021. 

That September 2022 meeting at the Roasterie in Brookside led to the duo launching VeloVisa.

From the archives: Tech company at the vanguard of KC startup boom exits to West Coast competitor

Each Major League Baseball organization has hundreds of foreign athletes, according to Ludlow, and have to deal with visas and passports that expire at different times and players that come and go with their visas following them.

“The amount of tedium in a very manual process for the teams was really what sparked my interest,” he noted.

VeloVisa simplifies the collection of documents for clubs, said Vena, now an executive with the American Royal.

“It automates the collection from some sources and then it makes the other areas just so much more efficient and quick,” he explained. “It eliminates a lot of risk. And by automating the collection of documents using things like WhatsApp, you don’t have to key in information that’s very important to — not only accuracy — but also being efficient and staying organized.”

The platform also automates filling out applications, he continued.

“It can spit out a sometimes-several-hundred-page application that would take 10 to 12 hours of paperwork and processing and printing and sorting down to seconds,” he added.

Getting baseball off the injury list

During last year’s baseball winter meetings, Vena and Ludlow traveled to San Diego and met with 15 teams and asked them about their pain points with the process, they shared.

“Me coming from the baseball world and not from the tech side to imagine that there’s now a product that was built based on the input of the end user is just a really cool thing to be part of,” Vena said.

They found that 90 percent of the issues that clubs experience are the same across the entire league, Vena noted.

“So (Ludlow) was able to aggregate those pain points and address all of them,” he added. “And then with that other 10 percent, he could customize the user interface to make it that much better.”

Vena and VeloVisa feel good about a product with which they can partner with teams — and not just hand it off for them to use on their own.

“We feel we’re giving them valuable tools in their day to day operations,” he explained. “To just be a little part in the bigger story of having success on and off the field is something we would feel pride in. So as we grow our clients, we just feel we’re serving and helping another team just be successful.”

With Vena’s connections, Ludlow shared, the Royals have been early adopters and supporters of VeloVisa.

“They have been helpful from concept all the way to usage,” he explained. “Kyle has a really great relationship with everyone over there. And so the person in charge, she has seen the product with ugly warts and she’s used it when it didn’t really work. She’s given valuable feedback and now they’re using it to prepare their players.”

Beyond the game

While Vena’s connections have been helpful in the baseball world, he noted that Ludlow’s connections in the tech startup world have also been beneficial.

“We’re very fortunate that there are people like Stuart in this ecosystem of Kansas City business,” he continued. “Really cool things happen in Kansas City. And it’s the support of networks that he lives in and serves on boards of that they just keep things moving along and being exciting.”

“We’ve been able to seek feedback not only from clubs but from a lot of Stuart’s peers,” he added. “It feels like we’ve got our own little network of champions cheering us on. So that’s just been a really cool thing to be part of, too.”

This year’s MLB’s winter meetings just concluded in Nashville; Vena was there once again representing VeloVisa.

“The buzz and excitement around this was infectious,” Ludlow shared.

They plan to carry that excitement into 2024, he continued, as they grow their client base, plan to expand across sports and leagues, plus contemplate product expansion.

“Once we really go deep into MLB, (the plan) is definitely to expand horizontally across sports,” he explained. “We’re already hearing whispers of (other pain points we could address). You learn a lot through the process of just getting into users hands. Are there other areas to expand into outside of just visa preparation in other areas of sports organizations?”