Former NBA star Baron Davis on what makes his business platform unique and how he helps entrepreneurs

Baron Davis may be known for his electrifying dunks and highlight reel plays during his NBA career, but he’s also making an impact off the court in his life after basketball.

The 45-year-old Davis played in the NBA for 13 seasons, earned two All-Star appearances and an All-NBA selection and, most notably, led the Golden State Warriors to arguably the biggest upset in NBA postseason history in 2006-07 Dirk Nowitzki led the No. 1 seed Dallas Mavericks.

While most fans know the former 6-foot-3 guard for his athletic highlights and his dunks against bigger players – look no further than his hit on 6-foot-9 Andrei Kirilenko during the 2007 playoffs – Davis dedicates his Now it’s time to play through entrepreneurship with his company Business Inside The Game (BIG).

The platform, which has been around since 2017, brings together notable personalities such as athletes and entertainers to develop their networking skills at events and encourage innovation on their journey to entrepreneurship. Notable athletes who are members of BIG include Chris Paul, Draymond Green, Julian Edelman, Corey Maggette and Marcellus Wiley.

“What would it look like if these micro-communities came together and became a larger version of micro-communities? That was my vision for BIG, to develop an app where we act as a platform for communications and events and almost act as a concierge for the entrepreneur, the athlete and the C-suite,” explains Davis in a one-on-one interview. “I want to gain knowledge, meet the right people, but also scale and find the right recipe for success.”

Davis had a successful career after being selected with the No. 3 overall pick in the 1999 NBA Draft by the Charlotte Hornets. Davis spent 13 years in the NBA and was the Hornets’ leading scorer in the early 2000s, leading them to two playoff series victories before moving to the Warriors. Davis led Golden State to their first playoff win in 16 years in 2007 before spending his final years with the Los Angeles Clippers, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks.

The UCLA graduate and Los Angeles native explains that his interest in creating a networking platform like BIG came to fruition in the final two years of his NBA career as he attended networking conferences and met people. As a participant, he noted that it was a “lonely and intimidating” experience. In other words, it felt directionless.

“I realized that going to a conference because you don’t know the people is a lonely thing,” Davis explains. “When you go to conferences or large events, there’s a lot of networking that happens. But there is no real intentional know-how or who you should know. I learned that at these conferences I always meet incredible people, people I need to connect with, but you also meet a lot of people who are wasting their time.”

Davis’ unfulfilling experiences attending these conferences ultimately led to the founding of BIG.

“I wanted to see what conferences bring, how do they bring people together? What did people get out of it? “I didn’t start as a speaker, I started as a participant and worked my way up to the stage,” explains Davis. “As I started to leave, I realized it was a lonely, intimidating place. As I got into the mix, I realized there was no organization, no structure, and no real know-how about who you need to meet, want to meet, or connect with.”

Davis goes on to explain how his platform easily connects one entrepreneur with another in a way not seen at a typical networking conference.

“You can lend expertise to an entrepreneur that you wouldn’t have even thought of as a consultant,” says Davis. “For BIG, the goal was how can I still convey the value of people to a larger community of people? How can we highlight entrepreneurs, investors and talent so that when people walk into a room they already know what they’re doing?”

The California native will host a summit and presentation during LA Tech Week in Los Angeles on October 19th and will also be at Art Basel in Miami in December. The BIG platform will launch an app in early 2025 and Davis says they will beta testing the app at LA Tech Week.

“How can we prepare ourselves for these events and conferences so that people don’t go in blind,” asks Davis. “Your contact card, the contact advice, you have a community of people every time you go somewhere where you can go to the app, press a button, get a ticket and now have an experience at a major event.”

Davis repeatedly brings up the mantra of “making micro communities into larger communities.” He emphasizes that a key reason for founding BIG was to “cross-pollinate” smart people from different industries in a suitable networking space.

“We live in a world where as an entrepreneur, as an investor, as a celebrity, you move so quickly that you can’t be everywhere you need to be,” Davis explains. “That’s why investors are very specific about industries. BIG’s goal was how we can cross-pollinate thought leaders in these areas and engage the right ecosystem of investors, athletes, C-suites and smart innovators and create information about industries and thought leaders in industries.

“Building BIG was a necessity because I realized so many people were underserved,” Davis continues. “There were so many micro-communities – what would it look like if these micro-communities came together and became a larger version of micro-communities?”

Davis explains that Business Inside The Game’s long-term goal is simple: to be “a connected fabric for people in business.”

“The long-term goal of Business Inside The Game is to create the connected fabric for people in business,” says Davis. “With our app, with our business cards – which are included in the app – it should allow people to socialize, share data, share information and ultimately grow our brand so we can have more collectives. For us, it’s really about growing these communities and allowing these micro communities of people to have a macro voice and a large audience.”