Five years ago Hanno pitched me the idea, and the first version of Eversport took shape on a whiteboard in my office in Vienna. This week the team announced a €5 million Series A, led by Enern, with Market One Capital, Russmedia and UNIQA Ventures joining, and the early believers Point Nine, RTA Ventures and Gerbig Ventures following on.
I was the co-founder and CTO in the first year. I built the first prototype, helped shape the initial business model and supported the first funding. I left the day-to-day long ago, but you never really stop caring about a company you helped start.
What Hanno, Emanuel and the team have done since then is the hard part: turning a booking website into the platform where sports studios run their whole business, and expanding across the German-speaking region. The new capital goes exactly there: deeper into DACH and into the product.
Two things I take away as a builder and investor:
First, marketplaces compound slowly, then suddenly. From the outside, year one looks like nothing is happening. Inside, every studio you onboard makes the next one easier.
Second, the team that stays matters more than the code that ships first. My prototype is long gone from production, and that is exactly how it should be. The founding insight survived; the software evolved.
Congratulations to the whole Eversports team. Keep going.