🍌⚾ "Burn the Boring" — Savannah Bananas Co-Founders Jesse & Emily Cole
The Best One Yet
Nick & Jack Studios
4.6 • 9.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Watch the interview on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/eyS-eokvP-U
Everyone laughed when Jesse and Emily Cole said they were going to save baseball by turning it into a circus. The traditionalists said it was a mockery. The investors said it wouldn't scale. Babe Ruth woulda blushed.
But today, while the Red Sox and Yankees yawn in the dugout, the Savannah Bananas are selling out those very same stadiums… while on stilts.
In this episode, we sit down with the husband-and-wife co-founders to uncover how they turned a struggling startup - with so much debt they had to sell their house - into a viral phenomenon with a waitlist of over 1 million people.
We dive deep into their "Fans First" business model, why they refuse to take VCmoney, and how "burning the boring" let them create a new sport and disrupt a 100-year-old industry.
They even got engaged in the middle of a (rainy) baseball game.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
- The "Anti-Business" Model: Why they refuse to take investors, sell advertising, charge for hot dogs, or collect sales taxes.
- Burn The Boring: How they audited every second of a baseball game to eliminate friction (goodbye, bunts and walks).
- The "Do The Opposite" Strategy: How a philosophy inspired by P.T. Barnum & Walt Disney helped them win in the attention economy.
- Metrics vs. Magic: Why Jesse and Emily ignore traditional ROI data to focus on "Return on Fan".
- (And why you should check the weather before proposing)
TIMESTAMPS:
- 0:00 - Intro: The "Cirque du Soleil" of Baseball
- 2:05 - The Meet Cute: How Jesse & Emily Met
- 5:20 - Why They Refused VC Money (Owning 100% Equity)
- 6:48 - The Walt Disney Lesson on Control
- 8:45 - Leaving $50 Million on the Table
- 12:55 - Burning the Boring: Inventing Banana Ball
- 19:00 - Failures: The "Human Pinata" Disaster
- 24:00 - The Strategy: "Whatever is Normal, Do The Opposite"
- 31:00 - Making Decisions on Intuition vs. Spreadsheets
- 42:00 - The Story That Defines "Fans First"
- 51:40 - Rapid Fire Questions
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About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, The Best One Yet is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Yetis slide into home base and then slip into a yellow tuxedo. |
| 0:05.0 | Because today's interview is on the most fun franchise on earth, the Savannah Bananas. |
| 0:10.7 | But this ain't a typical business interview besties. |
| 0:13.5 | This is also couples counseling. |
| 0:15.7 | Because we are here with Jesse Cole and Emily Cole, the husband and wife co-founders of the Savannah Bananas. |
| 0:21.5 | Together, they have disrupted baseball from a four-hour slog into a two-hour viral hit. |
| 0:26.8 | While the Red Sox yawn in the dugout, the bananas introduced dancing umpires. |
| 0:31.1 | It's the Harlem Globetrotters meets basketball meets basketball meets Broadway. |
| 0:35.9 | And it's Jesse and Emily's creation, the Cirque de Soleil of Live Sports. |
| 0:40.0 | These two didn't just sell out a stadium. |
| 0:41.8 | They sold out every stadium, including, yeah, Yankee Stadium. |
| 0:45.5 | And they did it by changing the rules of baseball to eliminate every element of boring. |
| 0:50.3 | The boring, from a struggle and startup with so much debt they had to sell their house, |
| 0:54.0 | to a $100 million new sport with a $1 million per. The boring. From a struggling startup with so much debt they had to sell their house. |
| 0:59.6 | To a $100 million new sport with a one million person wait list to get tickets. |
| 1:03.4 | The bananas have got 15 million followers on social media. |
| 1:05.2 | Jack, can you sprinkle on some context, please? |
| 1:10.0 | That's more than the New York Yankees, the L.A. Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox combined. And they did it with one dancing pitcher at a time. |
| 1:14.1 | And by replacing walks with a walk-off fan who caught foul balls. |
| 1:17.4 | And the business is inspired by Walt Disney, P.T. Barnum, and Saturday Night Live. |
| 1:21.5 | Oh, and The Grateful Dead. |
| 1:23.1 | Besties, please welcome the shortstop of short skits, the princess of dancing pictures, and the king and queen of cartwheeling umpires. |
... |
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