Santa Klores

Christmas has been my favorite holiday since I was a child.

Before I was old enough to grasp any deeper meaning, my childish innocence was satisfied by the idea of receiving gifts from a jolly stranger living in the North Pole.

When did we stop believing in Santa?

Everyone has a different story. For some, it was a mischievous older sibling who burst your bubble. For others, it was a classmate who laughed at your gullibility. But the feeling we felt is the same - betrayal.

Realizing Santa doesn’t exist is a human experience that catapults unsuspecting children into the constraints of the real world. After Santa disappears, you learn to stop telling people what you really want.

Eventually, you stop telling yourself what you really want. 

Today, we break that cycle.

Jake played basketball at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. At around 6’0 and 165 pounds, he was an undersized guard.

He played AAU on the Nike EYBL circuit for the New York Renaissance, a premier team in the city. His 17U team had a ton of NBA talent: Jose Alvarado, Hamidou Diallo, and Jordan Nwora to name a few. His team reached the quarterfinals of the Peach Jam before losing to Team Penny which featured PJ Washington. 

• Other notable Rens alumni include Dylan Harper, Kyle Filipowski, and Jonathan Kuminga.

• The experience of constantly competing against the best players on the EYBL circuit allowed Jake to elevate his game.

As a senior at Riverdale, Jake averaged 19 points and 8 assists. He decided to play Ivy League ball at Columbia, starting in the 2017 - 2018 season.

He didn’t play that year. A devastating shoulder injury sidelined him for the entire freshman season. Another shoulder injury sidelined him for his entire sophomore season. His senior season was impacted by COVID, as the Ivy League was one of the few conferences that opted out of athletics in 2020 - 2021.

In the face of continual heartbreak, his love for the game remained steady.

As a senior, Jake started conceptualizing a memorabilia marketplace with auctions and buy-it-now features. NIL was starting to take shape, and he knew there was an opportunity at hand.

After working to refine the concept and get user feedback from both sides of the marketplace, everything came together in the summer of 2024.

Daps Bounty would be a demand-driven marketplace.

Commerce is historically supply-driven.

When you go to Foot Locker, your options are constrained by inventory at that location.

When you shop on Amazon, your options are constrained by what sellers are selling.

When you use Uber Eats, your options are constrained by restaurants that use the app.

The constraints are accepted because existing platforms efficiently match supply and demand. But in markets where supply is scarce, a supply-led model does not optimize transaction quality or quantity.

Think of marketplaces with alternative structures - for instance, auctions. A collector bids on what Banksy has already made, rather than asking Banksy to fulfill his or her dream work. While this arrangement gives Banksy the artistic freedom to cook up what he deems to be great art, the transaction is not optimized. I am willing to bet that there is a ton of unfulfilled demand from collectors for custom Banksy pieces that would price significantly higher than any of his past works sold at auction.

Jake Klores’ theory is that:

• on the demand side, there are items or experiences people want, but are unable to find and buy.

• on the supply side, there are significant incremental revenue opportunities for sellers.

Daps Bounty is the real life North Pole.

The startup allows consumers to ‘put a bounty’ on anything, which means requesting an item or experience and quoting a price you’re willing to pay for it.

Daps’ beachhead market is basketball, a natural choice given Klores’ connectivity to top talent.

Through relationships with individual athletes and nearly every major talent agency - CAA, WME, Excel - Daps has been able to onboard and route offers to the vast majority of the best professional, amateur, and retired basketball players, coaches, and media personalities in the world.

Some bounties that got completed in the past few months:

• Trae Young, Austin Reaves, and Donte Divincenzo game-worn shoes and jerseys

• Viral McNeese basketball manager Amir Khan’s boombox

• Legendary coach Rick Pitino’s white suit

The sports memorabilia market is a $34B opportunity and is projected to grow to $271B by 2034.

There are billions of sports fans across international sports like basketball and soccer alone, not to mention racket sports (tennis, pickleball, padel), racing, and cricket.

Klores wants to create a new category that fulfills fantasies for collectors and fans alike.

Long term, the vision is to expand past sports.

I’ll let you imagine what that looks like.

Follow the Daps Bounty journey:

• Site

• LinkedIn

• Instagram

Headlines

• Why Thrive is expanding past venture. Pitchbook

• Ivy League endowments sell private equity stakes. FT

• Klarna’s revenue per employee soars to nearly $1M in AI efficiency push. Techcrunch

• Barkley will be a part of Inside the NBA on ESPN, according to Pitaro. FOS