Alex Kerr
the numbers guy of sports sponsorship

Alex Kerr runs a company built on a simple, stubborn idea: that a sponsorship is more than a TV spot and a few social posts, and that somebody should be able to count all of it. That company is Trajektory, and out of a converted-loft office in Chicago it now tracks more than $180 billion in annual sponsorship value for roughly half of the major professional teams in North America.

Trajektory sits in an unglamorous corner of the sports business - the part where a partnership manager, deep into what the industry calls "recap season," has to prove to a bank or a beer brand that the millions they spent on courtside signage and jersey patches actually did something. For decades that proof was thin. Reports were assembled by hand, numbers were inconsistent, and whole categories of value - the static signage, the in-venue screens, the physical assets a camera happens to catch - went uncounted.

Kerr's pitch is that all of it can be measured, consistently, with a methodology that does not change depending on who is asking. Trajektory pulls together digital and non-digital assets, applies AI-driven logo and brand detection to broadcast and social footage, and produces reports that rights holders and brands can both trust. In May 2026 the company raised $8 million to push further into that work, hiring engineers, growing its sales and customer success teams, and sharpening the AI underneath the platform.

He saw the problem from both sides of the deal

What makes Kerr credible to the teams and brands he sells to is that he has stood where they stand. Before Trajektory he built the business intelligence department at Monumental Sports & Entertainment, the Washington group that owns the Wizards, the Capitals and the Mystics. It was there, buried in recap season, that he first felt how badly the reporting tools failed the people who depended on them.

Then he crossed over. Kerr went to the brand side, eventually leading a 40-person marketing, growth and business intelligence division at a Fortune 500 company that poured tens of millions into sports sponsorships. From that seat the problem looked even worse: he was spending real money and getting almost nothing back in the way of insight. Rights holder and sponsor, buyer and seller - both were flying blind, and both were frustrated for the same reason.

That dual view became the founding thesis. If the pain existed on both sides of every deal, then a neutral, consistent measurement layer had a market on both sides too.

It started, unglamorously, in Tableau

The first version of Trajektory was not a slick platform. Kerr built the MVP himself in Tableau - functional, data-rich, and, by his own admission, plain to look at. He showed it to professional teams anyway. They immediately saw the value, and that reaction told him the market need was real, not imagined.

To turn the prototype into a product, Kerr brought on Matt Powers as co-founder and engineer to lead development of the polished platform that eventually launched. The company describes its own culture in three short phrases - "We're data nerds. We're quirks. We're experienced." - which is about as close to a mission statement as Kerr's understated style gets.

Growth without the hype

Kerr has been deliberate about how he scales, and he says so plainly. When Trajektory closed its $8 million round in 2026, backed by TechOperators, Mudita, Midwest Capital, Bridge and WISE Ventures, his framing was notably un-splashy: "In a market where stability and reliable data are paramount, this funding is a validation to our deliberate, sustainable growth strategy." No talk of blitzscaling. Just reliability, which happens to be the exact thing his customers buy.

The traction backs the tone. Trajektory now works with clients across the NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS, NWSL and WNBA, and more than two-thirds of the NHL, alongside dozens of Fortune 500 brands and leading agencies. An earlier seed round drew four term sheets - a level of investor competition Kerr's team described as almost unheard-of for a company at that stage.

The quiet operator

People who describe Kerr tend to reach for the same words: quiet confidence, strong work ethic, a data nerd with a distinct laugh. He leads without an overbearing presence, fosters creativity, and challenges conventional thinking on his teams rather than dictating to them. When he is not running the company he mentors startup founders and teaches as an adjunct professor at both Northwestern and Georgetown - the kind of side commitments that say something about what he values.

There is a bit of the athlete in the discipline. Kerr played baseball at Division III Kenyon College before earning an MBA at Duke's Fuqua School of Business, and the deliberate, repeatable approach he brings to measurement has the feel of someone who learned early that consistency beats flash. Even Trajektory's logo carries the message: hidden inside it are a column chart made of flames, a rocket, and an upward arrow - data, propulsion, growth, in that order.

For all the AI and the billions in tracked value, Kerr's ambition is narrow and clear. He wants Trajektory to be the honest, standard way the industry measures what a partnership is worth - so that the next partnership manager, deep in recap season, does not have to guess.