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Joe Wheatley

Co-Founder & CEO @ Ruley, the E-Referee | Start Up Business Expert | Entrepreneur

After 25 years building successful companies I found myself at a crossroads. I had built companies that helped people and families. I was proud of that legacy, I knew it was time for a new chapter.

In my early 50s, I sold my third company just a year behind schedule from a personal goal I set at 34. 

During COVID, I had the space to explore ideas that truly energized me. I enrolled in a six-month coding bootcamp to learn Python and deepen my understanding of the technologies shaping our future.

Now I’m the Co-Founder of Ruley, an AI powered smart sports E-Referee API  designed to help federations, sports media and consumer brands gain fans, players and spectators by being the go to venues for sports rules and insights.

My personal mission is to fuse decades of my experience and strategic thinking with modern tech to bring people together through playing sports and watching sports.  By working with these existing sports entities we can grow sports and all the good that comes with them.

At the heart of my work is this belief: we all deserve unbiased, instant information, and we all deserve to enjoy life like we did as kids. 

These ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. With the right tools, we can help provide knowledge in unique ways and inject more joy into everyday life.

Explore Ruley and our API rollout (and more) for sports:
🌐 ruley.ai

📸 Instagram: @ruley_ereferee
🎥 YouTube: @ruleythee-referee
📘 Facebook: @ruleytheereferee

🎾 Just Ruley it!

Cassandra Toroian

I started playing tennis young.

Which meant learning rules early.
Not just how to play but how to behave.

Sportsmanship.
Winning humbly.
Losing gracefully.
Those principles stayed with me.

They showed up later in finance.
In how I handled pressure.
How I treated people.
How I competed without cutting corners.

So when I sold my company and started thinking
about what was next, I didn’t immediately land
on sport. It took time.

What eventually clicked wasn’t nostalgia.
It was the parallel.

Sport only works when people trust the rules.
And trust breaks when rules are unclear,
inconsistent, or inaccessible.

As a child, learning the rules was slow,
but structured. As an adult, it’s harder.

Multiple sources.
Conflicting explanations.
Way too much noise.

That’s where the lightbulb went on.

AI isn’t about replacing the game.
It’s about supporting the values underneath it.
 
Clarity.
Fair play.
Respect for the rules and each other.

That’s why Ruley made sense to me.
Not as a tech product.

But as a way to support the principles sport
taught me from the start.

The rules didn’t just teach me how to play.
They taught me how to show up.

I don’t spend much time thinking about what
I’d tell my younger self.

And this isn’t because I don’t value reflection.
But more because I don’t know if she’d
make the same decisions I would now.

Starting a business at 50 is risky.
Arguably riskier than starting one in your 20s.

I have a partner.
A house.
A dog.

Way more responsibility that I had in my 20s.
More to lose.

But I also have something I didn’t have back then.
Experience.

And I dont mean the motivational kind.
I mean the practical kind.

The kind that teaches you emotional control
when things don’t go to plan.

The kind that teaches you to value people
over ego.

The kind that shows you what actually matters
and what can be ditched.

After 25 years in finance, I learned
one thing clearly:

Information shapes outcomes.

That belief didn’t disappear when I left finance.
It followed me into sport. And eventually, into Ruley.

Ruley exists because I chose to stay curious.
To ask better questions. To be an enquirer,
not an expert with a fixed answer.

I don’t think success is about having fewer
doubts as you get older.

I think it’s about learning which questions are
worth asking. And being brave enough to ask
them anyway.

Age didn’t change my ambition.
It sharpened it.

Luxury fashion solved resale a long time ago.

Platforms like Vinted proved that worn items can still hold value,
as long as there’s trust, authentication, and a clear marketplace.

What’s odd is how little of that exists in sport.

Sports gear is expensive. Often lightly used.
Sometimes used at elite level. And often tied to real performance history.

And yet once it’s outgrown or replaced, it usually
disappears into general resale platforms
or gets written off entirely.

There are places to sell second-hand gear,
but none that treat it as a category in its own right.

That includes high-value items. Match-worn kits.
Celebrity-used equipment. Limited runs with real demand behind them.

And it also includes everyday players too.
People upgrading clubs. Parents replacing boots.
Athletes moving on.

Fashion resale works because it’s specialised.
Sport resale hasn’t done the same.

Which is strange, given how much value is sitting
unused in garages, lockers, and kit bags.

That looks less like a behaviour problem
and more like an unbuilt market.

Does anyone out there know of a sport-gear focused resale upsale platform?

A conference company offered me the opportunity to meet with potential partners they viewed as very important to the racket sport industry.

But here's the catch:
And they wanted me to pay them a $10,000 fee.
For arranging those 20-minute meeting.

This isn't just bad form. It's bad business.

Alex Hormozi puts it best: "Give information away for free. Sell the implementation."

Business requires graciousness to be highly successful.
A willingness to help others succeed.
Because a rising tide raises all ships.

Short-sighted greed closes doors, whereas graciousness and generosity opens them.

Talking sustainability helps everyone.
How can you demand a price tag on that?
The company requesting that fee has lost my respect forever.

What do you think?

#BusinessStrategy #Leadership #Networking #Graciousness #Entrepreneurship

With the FIFA World Cup 2026™ - Canada, Mexico and the United States coming to the U.S., soccer is entering a very different phase here.

Interest is rising.
International ticket sales are strong.
The reception has been broadly positive.

But amongst many Americans there's a whisper under their breaths…

Only around 12% of Americans say they know the rules of soccer well,
despite the scale of the audience now being built around it.

Soccer is already one of the most nuanced sports to officiate and interpret.
Add a newer audience, unfamiliar terminology, and high-stakes moments,
and confusion scales quickly.

You see it reflected in viewing habits too.
Globally, women’s World Cup viewership exceeds 60%.
In the U.S., it’s closer to 16%.

That gap isn’t about accessibility. It’s about interest.
How can you be interested in something you don’t know much about?

If soccer is to grow in the U.S., rule of the sport
must become part of the infrastructure,
not an afterthought.

Ruley’s API is trained on soccer rules and edge cases with that in mind.
Not as a front-facing product, but as something leagues,
platforms, and media can rely on behind the scenes.

When interest grows faster than understanding,
That gap is where friction appears.

If you work in U.S. soccer leagues or soccer media
and want to explore how Ruley could fit into that
ecosystem, message me.

#FIFA #soccer #USSoccerLeague #USSoccerTeam

I saw coverage recently of used tennis balls being turned into bird nests.

It’s thoughtful.
And it does genuinely repurpose some waste.

But the contrast is worth noting.

In the U.S. alone, around 125 million tennis balls are discarded every year.
Globally, it’s closer to 300 million. Most of them are used for only a
handful of hours before they’re thrown away.

Turning a small number into nests is visible.
It photographs well. It tells a good story.

But it isn’t systemic.

The real issue is how tennis balls are treated as disposable from the start.

Manufactured at scale. Used briefly.
Then discarded with no realistic path back into the system.

Sport tends to respond to problems with visible gestures rather
than structural thinking.

That can raise awareness and that’s good but it’s worth observing the difference.

Structural change looks quieter.
It shows up in redesigning the product itself.
In extending its life. In deciding whether it should exist in its current form at all.

Sustainability in sport isn’t solved by what we do at the end.
It’s decided much earlier than that.

#tennis #padel #usta

Trying a new sport usually doesn’t fail because of interest.
It fails because of uncertainty.

What equipment do you actually need?
Is it worth buying everything upfront?
Will you even use it long enough to justify the spend?

Subscription models can remove that hesitation.

They let people explore new sports without committing to full sets of gear immediately.

That’s the thinking behind Volleybird Athletic Lifestyle’s “mystery box” concept.

Not a novelty purchase, but as a structured introduction.
A way to discover equipment, apparel, and smaller essentials
without overcommitting on day one.

Alongside that, the products themselves are being designed with responsibility in mind.

Materials, fabrics, and suppliers are being chosen with longevity and
environmental impact considered from the start.

The goal is that every item included moves toward
sustainable production as the range grows.

When people can try something new without a large financial
or material commitment, participation becomes easier
and decisions become more intentional.

Discovery works best when responsibility is built into the box.

We went to the PGA Golf Shows expecting to cover a lot of turf. 
And we sure did.

But we also found a massive surprise.

There’s a new wave of golf tech.

My Co-Founder Tracy Thomas and I made incredible contacts with young companies iterating on this historic game.

The "established" sport of gold is actually the very hungry for innovation.

The entrepreneurs understand that to modernize the playing experience, you need modern infrastructure.

Players want real integration between the player, the club, and the rules of the game.

So how do you manage that? How do you merge the tradition of Golf with the speed of innovation?

You need new foundations.
And that includes the Ruley proprietary API.

Ruley is now a new layer of the golf tech stack.

Imagine a golfer getting clarity right there on the course!
About penalty strokes or options to move their ball legally.
No searching through your golf bag for a handbook.
Just playing.

The "old" sports are moving faster than we thought.

The industry is ready.

Whether it's a tech training aid, golf course reservation app, or on course tech, there's something more you can do to help your customer shave points off their game.

DM me if your golf product is interested in learning more. 


#PGAShow2026 #SportsTech #GolfInnovation #RuleyAPI #FutureOfSport #golf

Volleybird Athletic Lifestyle was featured in the New York Post last week.
 
The piece focuses on something tennis rarely questions:
how often balls are replaced,
and how little attention is paid
to their full lifecycle.
 
Renewaball approaches that problem differently.
 
Used balls are collected, broken down, and remade into balls that meet performance standards again.
 
Same role in the game. A more responsible production loop.
 
This approach was built to work within the sport, not around it.
It fits into the sport as it already operates.
The experience stays familiar.
Performance stays consistent.
 
Progress in sport often comes from revisiting everyday equipment,
rather than launching something entirely new.
 
If you’re curious how this works in practice
and why it’s gaining attention now,
The full piece is worth a read here:
 
👉 https://lnkd.in/gT39qKX5

A broken tooth shined a light on what sports (and life) is all about.

Think about it. 

The U.S. Olympic ice hockey team showed unbelievable grit and determination….and sportsmanship.

The young player who had his tooth broken wasn’t upset.

He didn’t blame anyone. 

He was not upset.

It was part of the game. It is just a battle scar.

That’s the different between champions and everyone else.

Broken ribs, torn ligaments. It’s all part of the game. 

Scars show you are battle tested. You are fearless. You can’t be scared into submission.

The Olympians’ scars are a lesson for us all.

Get up everyday. Put on your big girl pants. And fight with no fear for your win.🥇

It's official! Ruley.ai is heading to PEAK 2026 in Las Vegas. 🎉 If you’re working in SportsTech, innovation, or sport operations, this is where the industry comes together. Let’s connect. April 20–22, 2026 | Fontainebleau Las Vegas. See you there. 🏔️

I know which one I watch and and have no clue. What about you?

Which of these Olympic winter games do you watch and have no idea what the rules are but you watch anyway because it intrigues you?

The author can see how you vote. Learn more

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