A soccer team with fewer than eleven players showing up is a headache for coaches and the club. The Teamy app, developed by Martijn Coevert, Wander Evers, and Jos Herbrink to provide better insight into player availability, proved to be a huge success. Investors are needed to further grow the app. That’s why Martijn participated in the NOM’s Investor Program.
The Teamy app clearly meets a need among amateur teams. In seven years, its user base has grown to over 200,000 active athletes. The hobby project has thus become a serious business. The founders can no longer manage to do any other work alongside it. They are therefore looking for an investor and—partly thanks to the knowledge they gained during the NOM’s Investor Readiness Program—will likely be able to close a good deal soon.
The Teamy platform was born out of the three founders’ frustration with a problem in their own team. “It happened regularly that we’d find out on Friday that we were one player short for Saturday’s game,” says Martijn Coevert, co-founder of Teamy. The coach would then have to scramble to find a substitute. Meanwhile, the team was left wondering whether the game would even go ahead. “You’d all canceled other plans for it, and then the game gets called off. That’s frustrating. We thought: there has to be a better way.”
From a hobby project to a business
All three of the Teamy founders have technical backgrounds. So an initial version of the app was built quickly. Martijn: “Jos and I are on the development side, and Wander has experience with designing and developing user interfaces as well as with marketing activities. It was actually the perfect team to set something like this up.”
The app’s main purpose is for team members to indicate at the start of the week whether they will be attending practice and the game. They receive a push notification as a reminder. Immediately after the app was introduced, it became clear as early as Tuesday whether substitutes were needed. In addition, attendance at practice increased. “An added benefit was that a much stronger sense of cohesion developed within the team,” Martijn notes.
Without much effort on the part of the Teamy creators, the app’s user base continued to expand. The three did, however, invest a lot of their free time and their own money into expanding the app’s features. For example, they added a chat feature and the ability to assign tasks to team members—such as who would drive to an away game. Teams can also track statistics. In addition, various user roles were added, each with specific access rights to information. In addition to the “Player” role, the app now includes “Guest Player,” “Coach,” “Administrator,” “Volunteer,” “Parent,” and “Observer.”
If you really want to keep doing well, you need to be able to invest enough time and money in the company.
Martijn Coevert Teamy
The Path to Greater Professionalism
The three founders also saw ample opportunities to develop a Teamy version for clubs. With this, a club can, for example, communicate directly with the parents of youth teams, schedule volunteers, and even feature sponsors in the Teamy app. Using statistics collected by the app, sponsors can gain insight into the reach and visibility of their advertisements. The Teamy app has also been adapted to sell raffle tickets for the Grote Clubactie; for many sports clubs, this is a welcome source of revenue.
By now, work on the Teamy app had expanded to the point where it threatened to interfere with projects for other clients. Elsewhere, too, there was a need to professionalize what had started as a hobby project in 2019. “Two years ago, we were approached by a party that was interested in acquiring us. After a due diligence process that took a year, the acquisition fell through because that party was unable to secure the necessary funding.” After that, a private investor did come on board, but the need for a larger budget quickly arose. “If you really want to keep doing well, you need to be able to invest sufficient time and money into the company. The experiences surrounding the acquisition process were a real eye-opener for us. Since then, we’ve been looking for an investor to establish a solid business model behind the platform.”
Be Well Prepared
Martijn says he thought he already had enough experience to attract an investor. After all, he had experience with the acquisition and also received support from Founded, the regional public-private organization that helps develop the startup and scale-up ecosystem in the Northern Netherlands. However, at Founded, he was made aware of the NOM’s Investor Readiness Program.
This is an intensive program lasting about ten weeks in which early-stage startups from the Northern Netherlands are prepared to successfully raise venture capital from investors. Topics covered include building a business case, conducting market validation, and developing a growth strategy. These are the aspects that investors consider important. By coming to the table well-prepared, the chances of success in funding discussions increase. Program participants practice pitch sessions and learn how to properly prepare for term sheets and due diligence.
Because the three Teamy founders found the Investor Readiness Program to be accessible—both in terms of cost and time commitment—they decided that Martijn would participate. “It helped us a great deal, especially during the process we were in the middle of. I learned a lot about the different types of investments available and the considerations involved in making those choices. What terms can you expect? And what should you watch out for?” For example, he learned that it’s not unusual to present a counterproposal. “That shows the negotiating partner that you understand what’s at stake, and you’re taken more seriously. You learn how investors view you.”
Plenty of growth opportunities on the horizon
Martijn currently estimates that about 10% of team athletes use Teamy, and the three founders want to significantly expand that share in the near future. They’re convinced they’ve developed the best team sports app and want to help sports teams strengthen themselves further and stay ahead of the competition. Martijn also sees plenty of opportunities to further expand the app’s features. All these developments require capital. With the knowledge and experience gained from the Investor Readiness Program, he expects this to be within reach. “If you plan to really commit full-time to your startup, I definitely recommend participating in a program like this,” Martijn concludes.