Former sports exec and startup guru streamline visas for athletes.

Former Kansas City Royals executive, Kyle Vena has partnered with software startup veteran, Stuart Ludlow, to establish VeloVisa. The startup automates the complex visa process for foreign athletes to streamline their move to play sports in the US.

• VeloVisa aims to simplify the visa process for baseball organizations with hundreds of foreign athletes.
• The platform automates document collection and application paperwork, reducing a 10-12 hour process to seconds.
• Vena and Ludlow have worked with a variety of baseball teams to troubleshoot common pain points in the process.
• The Kansas City Royals have been early adopters and supporters of VeloVisa due to Vena’s former connection with the team.

Kyle Vena, with 16 years of experience in managing immigration visas for the Kansas City Royals, saw the opportunity to introduce automation to a historically tedious and manual process of securing visas for foreign athletes wishing to play in the US. Enlisting the help of seasoned software startup professional, Stuart Ludlow, the pair launched VeloVisa to alleviate the challenging administrative burden for baseball clubs.

The Kansas City-based platform automates document collection and application processing, using savvy tech solutions like WhatsApp to collect critical player information. Vena details how VeloVisa can output comprehensive visa applications “down to seconds” as opposed to traditional laborious processes taking up to 12 hours.

To ensure VeloVisa addressed all areas of concern for baseball organizations, Ludlow and Vena engaged with numerous teams to understand their main pain points with traditional visa procedures. They found 90% of issues were consistent across teams and VeloVisa has been designed to provide effective solutions for the majority of these challenges.

Following productive meetings at the Major League Baseball winter meetings, the co-founders are planning further expansion for VeloVisa in 2024. They aim to grow their client base and expand into other sports and leagues. In addition, they hope to introduce further product expansions to improve efficiency in sports organizations.