dan-connerty-intangible

# S01E17 · Dan Connerty — Founder of NTangible <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef1zz38azzE" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img class="uv-poster" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ef1zz38azzE/maxresdefault.jpg" alt="Dan Connerty on The Useful Podcast Episode 17" loading="lazy" /></a> Dan Connerty is the founder of NTangible, a startup trying to do something nobody in sports has managed: put a number on being clutch. He played college baseball at Northwood University in Michigan after starting out at Concordia's John Molson in Canada, then pitched as the closer for the independent-league Hamilton Cardinals before a torn rib cartilage ended his playing days. He later worked in private wealth management on Bay Street, managing a book of business just shy of $250 million for founders, business owners, and investors, before going full-time on NTangible in January 2025. This is a short clip from a longer conversation — the full episode hasn't been released yet, but the story inside it is the whole pitch. A draft bust costs a franchise around $3.5 million. A failed D1 transfer costs around $150,000. Recruiting, Dan argues, gets treated as "a loss leader and a false science" because the thing that predicts it best — how a player performs when a game is actually on the line — has never been measurable. NTangible's Clutch Factor Score tries to close that gap with a projective psychological assessment, run close to 7,000 times so far across nine sports, from an overlooked D3 pitcher who became a top reliever to a 14-year-old softball prospect who outscored every professional tested to date. ## Listen <ul class="uv-linkrow"> <li>Watch<a class="uv-ico uv-yt" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef1zz38azzE" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></li> <li>Show<a class="uv-ico uv-sp" href="https://open.spotify.com/show/033DRed1adLXd1bg8honOl" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Useful Podcast on Spotify</a> · <a class="uv-ico uv-x" href="https://x.com/theusefulpod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@theusefulpod on X</a></li> </ul> <a class="uv-btn" href="https://useful.ventures/podcast/dan-connerty-intangible/transcript">Read the full transcript</a> ## Key facts <ul class="uv-facts"> <li>EpisodeThe Useful Podcast, Season 1, Episode 17</li> <li>GuestDan Connerty, Founder of NTangible</li> <li>HostGokul Bala, co-founder of Useful Ventures</li> <li>Company<a href="https://ntangible.co" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NTangible</a>, a mental performance platform built around the Clutch Factor Score</li> <li>TopicsCognitive performance testing, recruiting and draft risk, NIL economics, whether clutch is genetic, athlete-to-founder transitions</li> <li>Length~2.5 min clip published · full episode audio pending release</li> </ul> ## Guest <ul class="uv-linkrow"> <li>Dan<a class="uv-ico uv-li" href="https://ca.linkedin.com/in/danconnertyig" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn</a></li> <li>NTangible<a class="uv-ico uv-play" href="https://ntangible.co" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ntangible.co</a></li> <li>Host<a class="uv-ico uv-x" href="https://x.com/GokulsVision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gokul Bala on X (@GokulsVision)</a> · <a class="uv-ico uv-ig" href="https://www.instagram.com/gokuls.vision/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram (@gokuls.vision)</a></li> </ul> ## Key insights **A $3.5 million draft bust and a $150,000 failed transfer share the same blind spot.** Recruiting, drafting, and free agency run on gut feel and what Dan calls a loss-leader mentality toward the science of it — everyone inside sports knows the price tag, almost nobody outside it does. NTangible isn't pitched as an insurance policy; it's a second data point before an organization writes the check. **Clutch is roughly 60 to 65 percent trait, the rest skill.** Across close to 7,000 assessments in nine sports, Dan's data suggests a majority of an athlete's Clutch Factor Score is something they arrive with rather than build — though athletes who start high tend to keep climbing, and athletes who start low rarely leap into the elite range. **The test borrows from clinical psychology, not scouting.** Rooted in projective testing — in the lineage of the Thematic Apperception Test and the Rorschach — it shows an athlete an ambiguous scenario and scores the semantics of how they describe their role, their thinking, and what happens next. It's sport- and position-specific (a kicker doesn't take a quarterback's test) and never the same twice. **An overlooked D3 walk-on and a 14-year-old outscored everyone the model had ever seen.** EJ White, a D3 pitcher with no scholarship offer who "everybody knew" wasn't a D1 arm, tested as the University of Indianapolis's top-scoring reliever and helped the team reach the College World Series. Softball's Devea Crawford scored 30 points higher than any professional AUSL player NTangible had tested — at 14 years old, already playing four years up and signed to her first NIL deal with Adidas. **A mid-major coach can do everything right and still lose his job.** Dan's example: a New York State basketball program made March Madness for the first time in seven years, then watched 85 percent of the roster get poached by bigger programs within months. The next season's record depends on recruiting the coach didn't fully control — the exact volatility NTangible is trying to put a number on. **The product sells fastest where the buy-in chain is shortest.** One MLB proposal needed sign-off from a 32-person committee before spring training even began; two of the MLS soccer clubs Dan works with needed exactly two yeses — the sporting director and the sports psychologist. Decision speed, not sport size, is what's actually predicting adoption right now. ## About NTangible NTangible is a mental performance platform built around the Clutch Factor Score — a projective psychological assessment, in the tradition of clinical tools like the Thematic Apperception Test, that measures how an athlete thinks, feels, and is likely to act in high-pressure, ambiguous situations. Taken digitally in around 15 minutes, scored out of 1,000 using a neurolinguistic scoring guide built with industrial psychologist Dr. Ed Levine, and never the same test twice, it's designed to surface a trait scouts have historically only been able to guess at. The company also offers Howie, an AI support agent modeled on longtime sports psychologist Howie Schwartz, formerly of the Montreal Expos, giving athletes a private, always-available space to talk through pressure and performance. NTangible has run close to 7,000 assessments across nine sports, is in use across dozens of NCAA programs, and partners with organizations including Alliance Fastpitch — the largest softball organization in America — and NASCAR's RFK Racing. It was founded by Dan Connerty, who began developing the idea in 2019 with Dr. Levine and went full-time on the company in January 2025. Learn more at [ntangible.co](https://ntangible.co). ## FAQ <div class="uv-faq"> ### Who is Dan Connerty? Dan Connerty is the founder of NTangible. He's 6'6", played college baseball at Northwood University in Michigan after starting out at Concordia's John Molson in Canada, and played professionally as the closer for the independent-league Hamilton Cardinals before a torn rib cartilage ended his career. He went on to run Canada's first data-driven baseball training center and later worked in private wealth management at Syrian Associates on Bay Street, managing a book of business close to $250 million, before founding NTangible full-time in January 2025. ### What is NTangible and the Clutch Factor Score? NTangible is a mental performance company that measures how athletes are likely to perform under pressure through its Clutch Factor Score, a projective psychological assessment scored out of 1,000. Instead of asking multiple-choice questions, it shows athletes ambiguous scenarios and scores the language they use to describe their role, thinking, and likely actions, producing a number coaches and scouts can weigh alongside physical tools. ### How much does a failed recruit or draft pick actually cost, according to Dan Connerty? Dan cites roughly $3.5 million as the average cost of a draft bust and about $150,000 as the cost of a failed D1 transfer. He argues these numbers are well known inside sports organizations but rarely discussed publicly, and that recruiting and drafting get treated as "a loss leader and a false science" because the trait that predicts success under pressure has never been reliably measurable. ### How does NTangible's Clutch Factor assessment actually work? It's a digital, projective test — rooted in the same tradition as the Thematic Apperception Test used in clinical psychology — that takes around 15 minutes on any device. Athletes are shown scenario images with no definitive outcome and asked who they are in the situation, what's happening, what they're thinking and feeling, and what happens next. Their answers are scored against a neurolinguistic guide, and the test is sport- and position-specific, so a goalkeeper and a field player, or a kicker and a quarterback, take different versions. ### Is clutch performance something athletes are born with, or can it be trained? Based on close to 7,000 assessments across nine sports, Dan says roughly 60 to 65 percent of an athlete's Clutch Factor Score appears to be trait — something they're born with — with the remainder trainable as skill, though only up to a point. Athletes who score high early tend to keep improving; athletes who score low early rarely make it into the elite range. ### Why is only a short clip of this episode public right now? This episode of The Useful Podcast was recorded as a longer founder-to-founder conversation with Dan Connerty, but only a roughly 2.5-minute highlight clip has been released publicly so far, published in August 2026. The full episode audio is expected in a future release. The transcript below reflects the entire recorded conversation. ### What is The Useful Podcast? The Useful Podcast is a series of founder-to-founder conversations from Useful Ventures, hosted by Gokul Bala. Each episode digs past the highlight reel into the actual work of building a company. This is Season 1, Episode 17. </div> ## Related * [[podcast]] is the full Useful Podcast index. * [[manifesto]] is how we see the world and how we work. * [[notes]] is where we write about the world we see coming. * [NTangible](https://ntangible.co) · [The Useful Podcast on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/033DRed1adLXd1bg8honOl) · [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@TheUsefulPodcast) · [@theusefulpod on X](https://x.com/theusefulpod) Back to [[podcast]].