Life Outside Basketball: Adam Pearce on basketball and business

In this episode of the Scottish Basketball Podcast, I am joined by Adam Pearce to talk about Life Outside Basketball, how his experience coming to Scotland to play basketball at a high level has helped him build the life he has now off the court, and influenced the success he has had in developing his business. Adam Pearce (né Hammerschmidt) was born on 10 January 1994 in Vienna, Austria. He came to basketball slightly later (transferring from judo) and only started playing at age 12. He developed his game with UAB Vienna (U14) in 2006-07, and Timberwolves Vienna in 2007-08 (U14), with whom he won the U14 national title. From 2008 onwards, aged 14, he moved from Vienna to St. Pölten, into a basketball academy that combined school, boarding school, and basketball. He progressed through the U16, U18, U20 and U22 sides and into the St. Pölten Bundesliga team while earning youth Austria call-ups. His first senior appearances came in 2010-11 under Uros Vukadinovic, in an all-Austrian squad that contained five senior internationals. He was Austrian U22 national champion with St. Pölten in 2012. In September 2013, aged 19, he moved to Scotland, combining a Sports Science undergraduate degree at the University of Stirling with basketball at the Stirling Knights. He was in the Knights' starting five in a young side under Pete Duncan and stayed for two seasons. Also, in May 2014, he played for the Scottish Student Select team and, in July 2014, he played seven games for the Austria U20 side at the FIBA U20 EuroBasket Division B in Sarajevo, which included future NBA centre Jusuf Nurkic. In 2015-16, aged 21, he signed his first professional contract with the Glasgow Rocks in the British Basketball League, playing 31 regular-season games and four play-off games as the youngest man in the squad coached by Sterling Davis. He turned down interest from Germany and France to pursue his professional career and studies in Scotland, and then joined Falkirk Fury, partly so he could finish his degree. He stayed for three seasons before continuing his National League playing career at St Mirren in 2019. The single game he is known for most prominently came on Friday 11 November 2016: 46 points, including 14 three-pointers, against Tayside Musketeers in a 78-62 win for Falkirk in the National League. The 14 threes passed Stephen Curry's then-record 13 in an NBA game, set earlier that same month, along with the 12-three marks of Kobe Bryant, Donyell Marshall and Curry again, and the ACB record held by Jacob Pullen. Eurohoops picked it up and EL ESPANOL ran an exclusive interview under a headline calling him “the best three-point shooter in the world”. (He named Juan Carlos Navarro and Reggie Miller as his favourite shooters.) He was a two-time Scottish Cup winner (2017 and 2019), Scottish National League regular-season champion and playoffs champion (2017) with Falkirk. He was a two-time Scottish Cup final MVP, in 2017 in a 59-54 win over Boroughmuir Blaze, scoring 26 points, as well as in 2019 in a 100-78 win over St Mirren, scoring 25(ish) points. After basketball, he completed an MSc in Advanced Biomedical Science, he is currently finalising an MSc in Finance, and eventually founded Minerva Innovation Group during the pandemic. He was the treasurer and one of three trustees of Rising Stars, a social outreach charity he helped formalise that runs basketball classes in schools in disadvantaged communities in Glasgow, plus mentoring and CV support. He is married with a young daughter and baby boy, was named Scottish Scale-Up Entrepreneur of the Year for Minerva at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards in November 2025, and recently expanded his business with companies in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland.