Congratulations to Eversport! The team announced a $1 million seed round, led by Point Nine Capital and RTAVentures, along with Techstars and a number of angel investors.
The founding team, 2013: Emanuel Steininger, Ivo Radulovski, Hanno Lippitsch and Andreas Woditschka. Press photo via Kurier.
This one is personal for me. Two years ago Hanno Lippitsch came to me and pitched an idea: booking a sports court should not require a phone call. Anyone who has tried to book a court in Vienna knows the drill. You call during office hours, you hope somebody picks up, and if the slot is gone you start over with the next club. Every other industry had already moved this online. Sports had not.
I liked the problem, and I liked the team even more. So we made room in our office, and Eversport started taking shape a few desks away from mine. I had a great feeling about these guys from the very beginning: Hanno, Andreas Woditschka and Emanuel Steininger. I am happy that I could support them as a co-founder and CTO in the first year of Eversport.
About Eversport
Eversport is the platform for sports enthusiasts in Austria and Germany. It connects people who want to play with the providers of sports activities: visitors choose from over 1,000 different offers, find nearby facilities and book them online. The goal is to make finding and booking sport as simple as it should always have been, to give providers a real presentation platform, and to inspire people to try new sports along the way.
What I got to build
In the pre-founding days I had the chance to develop the first prototype and implement the company's initial online strategy. Building the first version of a product is a special kind of fun: everything is open, everything is urgent, and every decision shows up on screen the same week. Some of the things I worked on:
- Development of Strategy
- Web Development
- SEO Strategy
- Proof of Concept
- Corporate Design
- Responsive Web and UX-Design
- Front End Implementation
- Configuration of Booking Tools
- Concept for Booking Engine
- Open Data Import-Interfaces
- Help with Initial Funding
The prototype did its job: it proved the idea, won the first providers, and helped bring the first investors on board. The version running today is already far beyond it, built by the team, and that is exactly how it should be.
Wish them all the best. Keep going, and looking forward to more exciting news! :)