Featured Startup Pitch: TeamSnap is a tool for managing youth sports activity built around ease-of-use and convenience

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By Editor January 21, 2013
TeamSnap logo

TeamSnap logoCompany: TeamSnap

Website: www.teamsnap.com

Founder: Dave DuPont

Headquarters: Boulder, Colorado

Year Founded: 2009

Employees: 20+

Investors: EonBusiness, Trinity Ventures, Torstar Digital and Toba Capital

Twitter: @teamsnap

LinkedIn: us.linkedin.com/company/teamsnap

Facebook: facebook.com/teamsnap

Brief Company Description: TeamSnap provides a comprehensive service that uses individual online sites, native iOS and Android apps, emails, and texts to take away the hassle of running any group or team.

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By Dave DuPont, founder and CEO

Product Overview

More than 250 million Americans participate in some kind of ongoing extracurricular activity. Included in that number are nearly 27 million U.S. children who participate in at least one youth sport per season, and many participate in quite a few. Their coaches are often volunteers, and it’s usually up to parents of an athlete to keep up with what’s going on with the team. To help everyone out, TeamSnap developed web- and mobile-based tools to optimize youth sports team management and communications.

The iOS and Android versions are easy to use and allow coaches to keep the team updated while on the go. Coaches can sign up new players, add information, schedule new games or practices and perform other administrative tasks without needing a computer screen. TeamSnap’s design makes it simple to keep track of rosters, schedules, attendance, availability, team payments, statistics and more. Coaches can use the SMS messaging function to keep parents up to date.

TeamSnap believes in the power of community, athletics and teamwork. We want everyone to spend less time organizing and more time having fun on the field.

Founder’s Story

It is a classic ‘scratch your itch’ story. I wanted to solve my own problem as a coach working with youth sports teams. Getting everyone to the right place at the right time with the right equipment was always a hassle for me as a coach and parent. I found a couple of other guys who had already starting developing an Internet solution and together we formed TeamSnap, Inc.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

The company has grown to two million participants, parents, coaches and managers using only a modest amount of online marketing. The service itself is highly viral. If participants on a team find it useful, they each typically bring it to another team (often in a different sport) during the next season.

Market Opportunity

TeamSnap is becoming the dominant solution for managing amateur sports and other activities around the world. We already have more than two million users on 150,000 teams in 177 countries and are growing at a high triple-digit rate.

How We Stand Apart from Competitors

TeamSnap’s advantage comes from its unique dedication to understanding its users and delivering an unequalled team management solution. TeamSnap is designed from the ground up to help managers and coaches—typically volunteers without deep technical expertise—manage teams and communicate with participants and parents. It is not an outgrowth of a registration tool, a web payment system or a cell phone communication package. It is not a fan site creation tool or a cool social networking site for young sports fans. Rather, it is the integrated tool for those who actually have kids at home or a day job or both and do not have the time or inclination to work with a complicated software package.

Business Model

Teams and groups can opt for one of three pricing plans—free, basic or premium. About 80 percent of the teams who actively use the service pay for basic or premium, because at about $7-to-$10 per month they find it isn’t much to pay for the convenience we provide. We are also starting to implement ads for users on the free plan.

Current Needs

We just closed on $2.75 million of funding led by Torstar Digital in Canada, and we were their first U.S. investment. Our biggest challenge right now is hiring more people, particularly in the areas of software engineering and UI/UX/design.

TeamSnap – www.teamsnap.com