Lessons learned from my first users

The problem with recruitment without a marketplace

My first user was Anton. He was looking for a pro team and a college recruiter asked him for his athlete resume. He didn't have one, so he quickly made a pdf version. It seemed hard to read, so it gave me the idea to make a website for him. I made a quick prototype and he loved it.

In an ideal scenario, he would've shared it with his friends, who would've created their own. I would then have decided to make it into a product and launched it in the futbol community. I would've gotten more users and I would've learned from how they use it. Finally, I would've found a way to monetize it.

I ended up manually reaching out to players who were looking for a pro team (as opposed to a college) and a lot of them asked me whether I was an agent. Some of them created a page and some shared it with their network. What I learned from it is that they've already been sharing their resume with their network, but I was just adding an extra step for them.

Even though a page looks nicer, it does not add much value to the player. It's just a resume with a different format. I was not solving a problem for them.

The other issue is that when you're looking for a pro team, you typically need to send your resume outside of your own network, to the right people. Unfortunately, I do not have access to such a network, which requires me to collaborate with someone who does.

My idea was to venture into solopreneurship and this would not have been in line with my goals.

Another big issue I encountered was that most players are not tech savvy, especially those outside of North America, where I live. I took for granted that they would be able to go through the page creation flow smoothly because I tried to keep the user experience similar to popular platforms like LinkedIn.

I was wrong. I had to help a lot of players create their page and I had to make a lot of changes to the flow to make it easier for them. I also had to make a lot of changes to the page editor to make it easier for them to use.

I thought it was great because it would improve my platform. But at the end, what those players are looking for is an opportunity and connections. I was not providing them with that.

I personally never had to go through the college recruitment process, so I was not sure how it worked. I'm probably not the best person to build a product for them, and I would not have the credibility to do so either.

It's hard to provide value to a group of people you're not part of.

Out of my previous teammates, a lot of them became training coaches, especially those who did not pick up other skills (like I did with Software Engineering). Training is a big part of a player's life, so it made sense to me to build a platform for them to share their training services.

I thought it would be a good idea to build a platform for them to create a page and share it with their network. I thought it would be a good way to help them to get more clients, by presenting a page where they show their player background, list their training services, and accept payments.

This is what I'm currently exploring with a former teammate called Joce. The next stage would be to create a space where coaches can share pre-recorded training videos and charge a subscription fee for access to the content. Being an iOS developer, it should be easy for me to build an app for players to access the content.

A couple of futbol YouTubers have succeeded in doing this, and I'm excited to enable more ex-players to do the same. My motivation is to help players to make a living out of their passion, especially in Canada where it's hard to make a living out of futbol.

If you know a player looking to make more cash, ask them to DM me on LinkedIn!