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The #1 pickleball app. Blake Renaud of PicklePlay | Building Pickleball Podcast ep. 006
124 Plays2 years ago
Blake Renaud, CEO and founder of PicklePlay, took the opportunity and risk to leverage technology in an industry that has otherwise chosen to neglect it. It has paid off as her app has grown to 50,000 users, helping connect individuals of all experience levels. She talks about building out her team which started with folks overseas but has now found a home in the US. We hear about her experience as a female founder and the importance of continuing to believe in your pursuit despite what people will tell you. Her determination has led to partnerships with the likes of players and personalities such as Tyson McMuffin.
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Download on Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pickleplay
Download on iOS:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1504644136
Chapters:
01:00 Tell me about yourself and PicklePlay
03:40 Hiring a development team
09:00 Funding your idea
11:16 Being told your idea won’t work
12:50 Believing in your idea
16:08 Offering a free product
19:00 All desired features under one app
25:40 Listening to users
28:20 Being a female founder
31:39 Self-ratings, DUPR
33:06 Partnership with Tyson McGuffin
38:33 What do you look for when hiring
40:48 Competitors
43:27 Speaking to the nay-sayers
49:00 Using Reddit
53:04 What’s next?
55:50 Advice for founders
57:00 Closing -
The PicklePlay app helps players find local pickleball courts, clubs, events and players.
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Subscribe for free on:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5aPtDs5VOnqpbQpF12SLZN
Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/building-pickleball/id1666931896
Get in touch via email or Instagram:
Email: buildingpickleball1@gmail.com
https://instagram.com/buildingpickleball
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Beat Provided By https://freebeats.io Produced By White Hot
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Transcript
Introduction to Pickle Play and Blake Renaud
00:00:00
Speaker
We were told many times, this will not work for this demographic. You should not build this app for Pickleball. This is the wrong industry. It's not going to work.
00:00:15
Speaker
My guest in this episode is Blake Renaud. She is the CEO and founder of Pickle Play. We cover leveraging technology and the role it is played in growing her app to 50,000 users. She also talks about what it's like building her team out, which started off with some folks overseas, but has now found a home here in the US. She also shares her experience as a female founder and the importance of continuing your pursuit, despite what other people will tell you.
00:00:44
Speaker
Her determination has led to big partnerships with the likes of players and personalities, such as Tyson McGuffin. Now, here's the episode. Hey, what's going on, Blake?
Pivot from Basketball to Pickleball
00:00:56
Speaker
Thanks for joining me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here and chat with you. Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and Pickle Play?
00:01:07
Speaker
Yeah, so I am a busy mom of four little ones and live right in the Midwest. My husband and I love to travel and have always been intrigued with business and entrepreneurial and
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, just had a vision I guess a few years ago when we started playing pickleball to build a resource that would be helpful to pickleball players of all skill levels, whether they just picked up a paddle and have no clue where to go, how to find courts, how to find players, to the more advanced players that play regularly and then they're like, oh my goodness, we have
00:01:47
Speaker
a ton of text message threads or multiple platforms to communicate and we really just need help managing our schedule. So pickle play is a free mobile app for pickleball players of all skill levels. It's available on Android or iOS and we help
00:02:03
Speaker
solve pain points in pickleball. So we want to help grow the sport, help players get more involved, help people find court locations on our map screen, find other players in similar skill levels. And then if they have a private group of friends or a club or group, help them use our platform for scheduling and tracking who's going. So that's a very brief intro, but that's what we are here at Pickleplay.
00:02:30
Speaker
Awesome. The way you described it, there's got to be someone in the family, either like you or your husband, someone has a tech background. Is that right? No. Oh, okay. Totally off. Yeah. I'm like, that would have, you know, come in handy a little bit, but no, we just
00:02:48
Speaker
You know, when there's a problem and you experience it yourself, you're like, our mind just goes to someone's got to do this and someone's going to do this. So why, why not us? Um, so it's actually, my husband had the crazy idea we were going to build an app actually for basketball and, um,
00:03:07
Speaker
quickly shifted to pickleball. Once we started playing, we just saw a huge need for something like this. And so we did a lot of research and we partnered with amazing people and where we lack in some areas, we've partnered with great resources and a great development team to kind of help us pull through where we needed a little bit more help or more experience.
Building a Development Team
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, can you talk a little bit more about what it's like going through that process of vetting out developers and software teams? For someone like you said, you and your husband don't have a background in tech, you might be able to shine some light on a huge missing piece of this entire sport, hobby, whatever you want to call it. And I think it's like the tech side.
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, there's a huge, huge need. And as we're trying to solve as many problems as we can within our vision and our market of the pickleball world and what makes sense under our umbrella, there is still just a huge need for better technology and better resources for pickleball in general. And I think we've come a long ways since where we started three years ago, but
00:04:24
Speaker
We really did a lot of research. So we started out with this idea and we knew that we would use this product, but we started out by doing a lot of surveys and talking to people in the pickleball space, club leaders, group leaders, ourselves, because we played, but also friends and people all over the country that play pickleball just to kind of reaffirm and do some survey research on what we thought was going to be a good idea.
00:04:48
Speaker
So we didn't start talking to a development team until we had a little bit more ground to work with and had some, you know, verification of what we thought we should build. We actually should. So at that point then,
00:05:04
Speaker
Oh boy, it depends on financial resources and things. We had to do our first round of investing, gathering investors and ourselves. We invested quite a bit into this, but we've added out a lot. It is hours and hours and hours of talking to different tech companies, different leaders.
00:05:26
Speaker
You can get a pretty good vibe from just communicating and ongoing communication, whether you trust someone, you know, if they're reliable, trustworthy people. So we actually loved our first development team that we worked with. We became good friends with them, but we did start Offshores in India. It's just a lot cheaper. Wonderful, wonderful people got invited to their wedding. I mean, just amazing, amazing people over there that are so supportive.
00:05:56
Speaker
worked with them for over a year and then it just got to the point where
00:06:01
Speaker
the time zone differences. We had three little kids, and now we actually have four. So we had to do most, and I had to do most of my meetings very, very early in the morning or very, very late at night when we're sleeping is when they're working. So that was a logistical issue that just got to the point where it was very difficult to handle.
00:06:30
Speaker
And then we just got to the point where we were growing so quickly that we were running into some development issues just as far as things not working exactly how we wanted to and crashing issues and
00:06:46
Speaker
For people, I don't know how many people have a tech background, but Android and iOS is very, very different to developer, and Android is extremely difficult, and even though probably less than 10% of our users have Android devices, that was very, very challenging.
00:07:04
Speaker
Long story short, it is quite the process. We found a team that we ended up loving, but it wasn't working out after about a year. We switched to a new developer. That was quite the process, but this time came from a recommendation from someone we had a good relationship with. So that always helps if you have someone that has experience working with them and then launched that rebuilt app at the end of January of last year.
00:07:32
Speaker
Since then, we've been continuing to develop, invested heavily in really good back ends and development to make a great product for our users and excited to see what we bring and what we develop in 2023. Yeah, that's awesome.
Overcoming Investment Challenges
00:07:53
Speaker
I think definitely like tech
00:07:56
Speaker
even aside from pickleball like tech is already something that's kind of like daunting like as soon as someone mentions it and then if you like factor in I guess what you maybe like former demographic of pickleball which was out of like the older crowd and they're definitely like very hesitant so it is
00:08:17
Speaker
That's why I was very intrigued when I found Pickle Play, wanted to bring you on here is that you could shed some light on how technology can actually help foster even better community within Pickle Ball, which community is like a situation, like commonly used word whenever people are talking about Pickle Ball. Um, so yeah, that's definitely awesome. One thing you mentioned was investment. So.
00:08:46
Speaker
It's always difficult to figure out how you're going to fund this. I think a lot of people have ideas and a lot of times there's a lot of reasons that execution doesn't go through, but I think a huge factor is always investing. Do you have anything that you could talk about as far as what may have worked for y'all as far as early investing?
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's not an easy process either, right? We're blessed and thankful that we were able to have saved some of our own money to be able to put into a business venture. At the time, like I mentioned, we thought it was going to be in a different platform. I had three kids that were going to be school age, and I was looking for a business to get involved in that was flexible.
00:09:35
Speaker
for our family. And so that helped our situation.
00:09:42
Speaker
You do, you start with your friends and your family. And not that I recommend asking family for money, right? But we're our main investors and then we started with people that we knew or people in our local community. So they call it friends and family doesn't actually mean you have to be related, but people that you know in your network. So I would say a big piece to
00:10:07
Speaker
any entrepreneur that's looking in any business right is networking is really important and people people know your work ethic and you know
00:10:20
Speaker
if you're trustworthy or not, right? If you're a hard worker, what are you going to do with their investment? Do they trust you enough? And you have to back up your idea. So when we started our journey, we reached out to, I have to be delicate how I say this, but to a lot of the leaders in the pickleball space at the time with our idea, because we came in and we're like, we love pickleball. How do we get more involved in the sport? And it's like,
00:10:48
Speaker
Well go here or go on this website or do this or you know a lot of just tedious hoops to jump through and not anything quick and easy and even though the demographic
00:11:04
Speaker
even three years ago is much older. It is trending younger. And even the older demographic every year is getting more and more used to using mobile apps and technology. So it's just a combination of, you know, we were told many times like, this will not work for this demographic. You should not build this app for pickleball. This is the wrong industry. It's not going to work. We were told
00:11:28
Speaker
that it was just not, yeah, just not to do it or not to pursue it or that people did not want to partner with us because they did not think it was going to work. So then we had to really decide, man, we see a need for this. We think this could be an amazing business. Like someone is going to do this.
00:11:47
Speaker
Like, should that be us and should we continue to pursue this? So, I mean, we teamed up with Tyson McGuffin right away, who's an amazing top player who saw the vision for Pickle Play. We teamed up with some influencers in the community that were pretty well known that also shared the vision and understood, like, there is going to be a need for this. And it might take some time from the older demographic to get used to it, but
00:12:15
Speaker
It it will come and if we build a good product like people will start using it So I would say that helped us from you know Getting investors with some of our partnerships that we established early on to help kind of back up our vision There's that one part where you're talking about like
00:12:39
Speaker
How, how did that kind of feel when some of the people that you went to initially, people who are heavily involved in the industry, in the sport were like, yeah, we don't think it's going to work. Is there something kind of like pivotal that happened there as far as like, maybe it's just believing yourself. Maybe it's just believing in your idea or, um, yeah, I think a lot of people are just told that.
00:13:03
Speaker
their idea isn't right. It's not the right fit. I mean, at one point people thought the internet was just a fad. So like, yeah, is there something that happened there? Yeah, I would say, um,
00:13:18
Speaker
It helped that we're pickleball players ourselves because we knew there was a need. And I think it does help that we are a little bit younger because we knew that, yes, it's an uphill battle based on demographic, but we knew that
00:13:37
Speaker
everyone uses their phone for pretty much everything. And that is not going away. So whether you like it or not type of thing, yes, people like to... And honestly, we have a web version now for our clubs and groups because of the demographics and because some people do want a larger screen to post their schedules. So in the last six months, last just three months really, we launched a website version for any of our clubs or private groups
00:14:06
Speaker
Help with some of those barriers so we're not like this is the only way it's the only way it's gonna work like we're adjusting to to some of the demographics and the needs that are but essentially we just
00:14:19
Speaker
you know, we just knew we had talked to enough people and knew from our own experiences that there needed to be a platform like this. So, um, and for the people that told us no, um, like out of respect for them, most things like this do fail, right? And most new startups do fail. So like even our initial investors and ourselves, like we knew going into this and we still know going into this, like,
00:14:46
Speaker
This could completely fail and you could lose all of your resources, right? I mean, we have a free app, so our monetization goals are long term. And so it's not like we're wildly successful yet. We're still growing, we're still developing, but we are now over 50,000 users and I'm talking to people every day verifying
00:15:11
Speaker
They're glad that someone has built this resource on one platform. You don't need to go to this website and have this app and this text message thread. You don't need like seven different resources. You can actually do it all on Pickle Play. So yeah, at some point we just believed in ourselves, honestly. But again, we had enough people that were supportive of what we were doing that really kept encouraging us along the way.
00:15:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's like it's funny that you don't have a tech background because the way you like talk about it, like the research and like being nimble and also this point about. I just lost my train of thought, but when you mentioned free.
00:15:59
Speaker
Can you kind of go into that further about like, you know, maybe there are other founders out there who want to offer a product for free. Like how do they do that initially? And then yeah, figure out how to monetize in the longterm.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, um, I mean, before you can monetize anything, you have to have a really good product, right? So the first year we were just testing the waters. I mean, we had this great idea. We knew it was a great idea, but we had to get something out there to verify and to affirm that we were headed the right direction. So I would say the first year, like no questions asked 100%. We're like, this is going to be free because we can't, how would we even charge someone for this new product? Um, and then,
00:16:40
Speaker
A lot of apps, I mean there are different strategies. You can pay right up front from download, but you better have a really great product to do that, and people need to see the value of that right away. Yeah, we just really felt like Pickleball is growing. It's such a new sport in general.
00:17:02
Speaker
People are coming into this and we want to have a resource for people that have never played in their life Like they just picked up a paddle at Walmart. And so how am I gonna charge someone that's never literally never played, you know to use our app when They're just trying to find a court to get into this sport. So we just want that barrier low I highly recommend keeping barriers low for a point of entry for your users and That's I mean a lot of different
00:17:29
Speaker
businesses can use models similar. But yeah, we really felt like Pickleball is new and growing and we want to have a good resource to help grow the sport. The more we grow the sport, the more people play in Pickleball, the more people that are going to download, then eventually our long-term goal obviously is to monetize through ad revenue. We have an optional subscription model.
00:17:53
Speaker
It's like $1.99 per month or $20 a year. And we're slowly, I mean, right now we have three or four features built in for that subscription model. But one of the bullet points on people that want to upgrade is literally you're just helping us support the development. And so a lot of people, some people upgrade just to help us out, right? They know that we've invested heavily into this project. And then,
00:18:22
Speaker
2023, we're looking for new features and things to add to add more value to those pro subscribers. That's awesome. Yeah, you picked the right like sport and community to get people who want to like if they see you're doing it, they want to like help out. I feel like people in Pickle are very, very generous with their time resources, whether it's also like financials.
00:18:48
Speaker
But, okay, I remember what I had thought about earlier that I lost. Okay. It was the idea that your application is centralized. It's like you meant you were talking about it. How like, if you want to find people to play, you got to like, go do something else. If you want a message, you have to use something else. Like something that was very, very, uh, like clever, brilliant about the application is that it's centralized. If you look at a lot of applications, like
00:19:16
Speaker
That's a very key component. This is speaking from just like a UX designer, and I'll try not to go too far into the rabbit hole, but usually you don't want users to get out of your application. Like Instagram, that's why when they introduced the shopping, when they first beta tested it with Kim Kardashian, they found something that
00:19:38
Speaker
they weren't really expecting and it was like, okay, there's a one click by, but it was that it kept users in the application and they weren't leaving. So they just kept spending more and more time in this application. Not saying that Pickle Play has some of those
00:19:54
Speaker
Um, like, uh, I guess like some of those bad, uh, wraps as far as like social media, it's doing something very great, but it is great to see that. Okay. If I want to message someone, it's all in that one thing. Um, you talked about something else as well, as far as low barrier to entry, like that's also very, very huge. When I first opened the application.
00:20:18
Speaker
you didn't ask me to sign up for anything. That's another thing that I'm very surprised, given that you or your husband don't have a tech background. You obviously partnered up with the right people, because you'll open applications where they ask you for stuff without even providing you value. And that's just like from a designer standpoint and just a user standpoint, it's just a huge no-no. Like, why would I want to give you my information if you haven't even given me something as a user, right?
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. We always are looking, in fact, right now we're relooking at our onboarding process, right? Like we do ask a couple extra questions. Like, are you looking for tournaments, clinics, whatever? And we're like, you know what? There's too many, there's too many clicks right now. You can click skip, but, um, something we're looking at even next month is like, let's, let's reduce some of those clicks. Like, of course, okay. It's a pickable app. We need con like we need a name.
00:21:10
Speaker
of some sort. We need a, you know, we need an email to create your account, but we also and we need a skill level, which we do a self reading right now. But other than that, we don't really need anything else, right? Like, that's what you need to be paired up with other people to find other people. So yeah, we are trying to keep the barriers low. You know, we don't have a tech background, but we we do have business and marketing backgrounds. And so
00:21:35
Speaker
it's like we know like we're not going to build anything that like we wouldn't want to use and we have pretty high standards so I feel like that helps too right it's like we didn't just build a cheap web app that can be thrown up there and it's clunky and like okay we're just going to try to just get this out there like we we really have taken a ton of time from a design standpoint and
00:21:59
Speaker
Um, just the entire process has been very, very tedious and what, and, and very, very thought through every little thing that we've built, um, to ensure that it goes with our branding that it, that it matches our ultimate goals of pickle play. And then, yeah, like you said, with having multiple things in one platform.
00:22:20
Speaker
Like it's incredible. If you join pickleball, you're like, well, like one group uses like one app or like a communication tool. And then there's like a group text message thread that's dinging all throughout your workday. And you're like trying to work and then you then go to this website for our schedule and then go to the, you know, it's like.
00:22:39
Speaker
My husband and I were just like, this is ridiculous. We do not need, like no one should want that many different things, right? Like that is so much to keep track of. So though pickle play is not perfect, we do pull in a lot of resources to condense that into one place. I mean, not that you'll never use some of the other platforms again in your life, but we are trying to help minimize people's lives and make their life easier.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah, people just want to play pickleball. They don't want to have to like do the organization. Yeah, seriously. I've had friends for a while there. I was in with the same group of people as a WhatsApp group and I message group and then like a what was the other one? It's like WhatsApp text message, probably like IG, like
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, and Team Reach was another big one, too. So it's refreshing that now we have something that also does not look dated, because if you look at some of these other applications, I'm not going to put any names out there, because I don't want that smoke. But Pickle Play does have a nice, like, honestly, it has a Pickle Ball vibe to it. But also, yeah, very refreshing, has a nice clean UI. It's nice. Thank you. Yeah.
00:24:01
Speaker
Oh yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, just thank you. It's fun to like people that have your background and just can appreciate the little things that, you know, are sometimes overlooked. It's like, yeah, we've actually spent a lot of time designing and trying to make this as clean and easy as possible.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, when you talk about going back to the conversation about centralized application, and you're having multiple different applications and functionalities in one, it's definitely not easy because it can make a user feel overwhelmed. There could be way too many options, and they sometimes just want to do that one thing. So I think as far as pickle play goes,
00:24:44
Speaker
Times I've used it I think it serves my purpose well which is nice you know like I'm not getting inundated with Notifications things I don't want to see So there's always like a tricky balance there, but yeah, I would say that it that is a hurdle you know at times is like because we do offer so much like
00:25:07
Speaker
You know, we've had we did put a lot of thought into our updated
Role of User Feedback in App Improvement
00:25:11
Speaker
home screen. We're still working on our looking to play feature. We have an update actually coming out this week that's going to make that look better. We offer so much that we have to be really intentional and try to.
00:25:23
Speaker
still have everything separated and clean cut, like our map screen for finding courts and players and our club section for people's schedule and group play. And then our home screen kind of brings in a little bit of everything, like people looking to play. There's how to play pickleball. There's sometimes we post live links to watch pickleball. But yeah, we're still a work in progress. I mean, I take feedback and talk to users every day pretty much. And we have a long list of things that we want to continue to improve upon for sure.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah. That's also another thing that you want to hear from a founder is that they are listening to the feedback and not just listening to it, but they're like actively pursuing it. Uh, also like speaking to the co-founder of diadem at inspect and he was talking about, he's like, team's not huge and they still have like so many, uh, like they're like sometimes overwhelmed with calls and he just sometimes picks up the call and talks on customer service. So.
00:26:21
Speaker
That is something I always admired about startups and founders is you can't be too good for any role. You just end up being a jack of all trades. Yeah, for sure. Yes. Do you consider yourself a founder or a co-founder with your husband?
Challenges as a Female Founder
00:26:45
Speaker
I'm not trying to start anything. Yeah, well, let's see. Let's see how dinner goes. No, I'm just joking. So I do consider myself a founder. So Alex has his full-time job and commitment and he has his own business that he runs. So he did, I will give him 100% credit. He came up with the idea.
00:27:04
Speaker
We started playing pickleball like I like to play socially and casually he likes to play competitively we love to play when we travel so like we both saw the vision and understood why we should build this but he for sure like originally had came up with the idea and then I was like I said looking to get into
00:27:24
Speaker
work again while I thought my older kids were going to be in school all day. I had a little surprise baby come along this last year so she's a little sweetie but now we have four kids and I have a background in business and management and I know how to execute things so I guess to answer your question I consider myself the founder because I've actually been the one to
00:27:48
Speaker
like make it happen and actively work on this. This is my full-time commitment and he is just too busy with his work and his business to do that. Gotcha. One, congratulations on the baby. That's awesome. I don't know how you have four children. I can't even take care of like a goldfish.
00:28:08
Speaker
The reason I asked that question is I didn't even get to ask this to Aubrey Steele, the founder of Chaville. But what has it been like founding a company and a brand as a female? Yeah, it's I'm extremely grateful for the support that I have. I think that our culture and our world is so encouraging of women. And I think there's a lot of
00:28:39
Speaker
Like it is really hard and every day is really hard. Honestly, there's, especially with throwing the baby in the mix. I mean, this year has been very challenging. And when you own a own business, like you said, when you have to wear many hats, like
00:28:52
Speaker
I didn't have a maternity leave. There's no maternity leave when you own your own business. I don't have anyone to take over what I do every day. It's crazy, but again, I feel like I've had nothing but support from people. I am so grateful that I do work
00:29:11
Speaker
in the tech world and it's 2023 and I can do a lot from Zoom and I work from home. So that gives me great flexibility because I do run the business. I mean, if I have to do email at late at night, I can quick, you know, send a few emails out if I need to schedule my calls at specific times that line up with that's best for my childcare, I can do that.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, some days are very, very hard and the first six months when I had a newborn was crazy. But it's getting so much better and she's sleeping better and I've had nothing but support from my development team, from all the people I work with and just the pickleball industry has been really great to work with.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's fantastic to hear. And I feel like COVID or I didn't remote, I didn't work remotely prior, but feel like remote work has. Like people have now felt a little bit more empathy towards people with families. Like a child like runs through the office when they're like on a call or like a dog, people don't get like upset. They're just like, Oh, I kind of forgot for a second there that.
00:30:30
Speaker
like people have lives and we're all just trying to like make it work. Yeah. I'm so thankful on Fridays. I typically don't have childcare. So, um, I, I don't do too many, uh, zoom or like extremely important things on Friday. I do more behind the scenes paperwork office in my office. Now I have a bouncer next to me and I have a, you know, some baby toys. Um, but we just make it work. And I think it's part of,
00:30:54
Speaker
life and having a family and just whether you have a family or a pet or whatever, like, yeah, doing life with others and people that are in your circle. It's important. And I've never had anyone be upset that if my babies had to join a call, no one's ever cared. And honestly, if somebody gets sick, it's just, you know, we might have to reschedule. So nothing that I do is overly pressing that I couldn't reschedule if I needed to. So
00:31:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. Um, people don't want to also reschedule on the founder too. All right. I wrote this note and I, we just got caught up, but you mentioned in pickle play, it's self rated. What is the future looking like with duper is it is going to be a partnership or are you just going to use duper or are you just going to be like, no, we're going to do our
00:31:52
Speaker
That's a great question. So I am in really open discussion with Duper right now. So we're very open to seeing what that looks like. I'm open to any rating system right now, right? I don't have any specific ties. So pickle play, unless there's a deep partnership or reason to, like we really try to stay as neutral as possible because our app and platform is good for all pickleball players anywhere. Right now,
00:32:23
Speaker
Most players know their skill level, so the self rating is fine. If they're a beginner player, then they put beginner and they can adjust that at any time. But yeah, we're definitely open and excited about what this year might bring for pickle play and rating options. So I would just say stay tuned. I'm really in some good discussions right now with being able to pull in official ratings and we'll see
00:32:53
Speaker
We'll see what comes of it. Sweet. Yeah, we'd love to. Awesome. You mentioned McGuffin. I know that is, I think it was like last week you went on his podcast. What is, if you can't discuss it, what is that partnership?
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to go into detail on any of our partners, you know, just out of privacy, but, um, Tyson has been extremely supportive and we have had a great relationship since the beginning. So he has been supportive of pickle play. Um, and we have an agreement with him that we're excited about that, um, he is on board with pickle play and helping us grow and sharing it with us, uh, with his campers, his camp.
00:33:39
Speaker
world is very very active and very good so whether it's social media or to his Tyson McGuffin camps or some special events here and there he is representing pickle play and yeah can't go into too many details for really anyone I mean we work with multiple players
00:33:59
Speaker
But he has just been literally was the first player that we talked to and has been on board and. Part of pickle play since the beginning, so. Yeah, that's real cool to hear. Where was I going to go with that? Oh, I'll just go to the next question. Something I did want to ask you about.
00:34:26
Speaker
Was y'all's background with like, have you ever funded a company before? I know that you had mentioned your husband, Alex. He works for a company that he founded, started up.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah, so he works in finance, so his background's in finance. And then I used to run actually some cleaning businesses. So we founded and ran multiple cleaning businesses. And it was great, but I had three kids, boom, boom, boom. Life was crazy. Our youngest had
00:35:00
Speaker
was very colicky and had some a few issues going on and so um it was like i am not passionate about cleaning like yes it might be a great opportunity a good business but the service industry is so hard and when
00:35:18
Speaker
you know, an employee wouldn't show up or something happened like you got to go out on the job and that just wasn't working for our life. Like it wasn't possible for me just to drop everything and fill in shifts here and there. So that's why we got out of that. It just was not working for our life. But that's what intrigued me to get into the tech space and something like this because
00:35:44
Speaker
though I don't have anyone to cover my maternity leave yet. I mean, hopefully someday as pickleball grows, I do have interns, I have some employees now that work part-time and we're slowly growing and as we monetize, there will be opportunity to have some additional help. But I just couldn't have a job where I had to just drop everything and leave because of having a family, it just wasn't gonna work.
00:36:10
Speaker
I like pickleball a lot more than I like cleaning. Yeah. Yeah. Let this be known that it doesn't matter what industry you're in, you could be in the cleaning business and you can make that pivot to tech. Yeah. And I mean, nothing against cleaning businesses because honestly, like it's great. And some people are really passionate and it's a, it's a much needed service, like 100%, but it just wasn't something I was personally passionate about. And it wasn't, it wasn't working for us.
00:36:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like I've been a pastry cook before and then I got into the tech space. So like whatever your background is, I think it's a good lesson for any of the listeners is that like, if you have this idea, then pursue it. Don't just let someone else take it because chances are someone else is thinking of it. The only difference is the person who decides to act on it and execute on it.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Building a Reliable Team
00:37:06
Speaker
And yeah, and pairing up with people that do know what they're doing and do have more experience wherever you're lacking is extremely important. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And having that awareness to like know what you're bad at and like editing and letting someone else like take the reins. Yeah. You talked about this briefly, but
00:37:29
Speaker
question about building your team. So like you did mention, like things are going well with the team in India. It's just that time differences. We're back in the US now actually. So I started there. Yeah. Um, but yeah, our lead developers actually in Florida. And so, um, that's been extremely helpful. Just being one hour difference instead of, you know, 11 and a half, it's just helped the entire business process for me. Um,
00:37:57
Speaker
And then then he manages people that a couple other people that we pull in. It depends on what we're building and how many resources we need each month. But we typically have about three people working on pickle play. And so our lead developer is in the States now, which has been extremely helpful. Yeah, that's super helpful.
00:38:20
Speaker
What do you look for when you're hiring? And this could also go back to what you were looking for when you had your cleaning business. And yeah, what do you look for when you're like building your teams or anything specific, you know? Yeah, I think someone, I mean, they have to see the vision for what you're doing because any job is hard, right? I mean, it doesn't matter what your role is. Like most.
00:38:46
Speaker
most jobs are difficult and have their challenges. And so someone that's like, understands like this is a small business, right? The culture, the work, the energy, the effort that it takes, like every dollar is important and where we put this resource is important. So people that understand
00:39:08
Speaker
that are trustworthy, obviously. I mean, I feel like once you talk to someone one or two times, you can really tell like, Hey, do I trust this person? Trustworthy, hardworking, like understanding, are they going to go the extra mile if something crashes in the middle of the night or like Saturday, like
00:39:25
Speaker
App crash is on Saturday. Are they going to ignore your text recall because it's an off day? Or are they going to jump in and try to help out? So from a tech side, just availability and someone that's on board with your vision and sees the long-term goal. Our developer knows that we're building something unique and in a unique space and a unique time. And so I feel like he's excited.
00:39:52
Speaker
He sees a vision of what we're doing and wants to be a part of that too. As far as interns and people that I hire to help with court entry or other data or some behind the scenes stuff, that's a little bit more flexible. But again, it's people that I know, people that I've networked with.
00:40:13
Speaker
One is one of my ambassadors, just someone that's used pickle play and that has been helpful that I was like, hey, I need some need some help. I'm looking to hire someone. And jumped right on board to help out so. Super cool. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of good nuggets there. When you first started pickle play,
00:40:41
Speaker
Did you look around to see what other similar apps existed?
Facing Competition and App Development
00:40:45
Speaker
Did you find anything? Do you consider anyone a competitor right now?
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah, when we started, I mean, there really wasn't much out there. There's always been places to play. I mean, that's been around for seven or eight years now, I think. So USA Pickleball has always had that court locator. Honestly, someone just talked about this the other day. I don't remember if it's Android or iOS, I'd have to check. But anyways, there was a resource for just courts. However,
00:41:14
Speaker
I didn't know that when I was a beginner pickleball player and I think a lot of people don't necessarily know that that exists when they're just starting out on the journey. So wanting to have something that was
00:41:29
Speaker
little bit more and a little bit more available to players maybe that aren't you know already in the pickleball zone. So I would say places to play as far as courts again I have a great like open communication with USA Pickleball because I think that we could really help honestly provide a lot of value and get people more aware of the sport and
00:41:53
Speaker
But there really wasn't I mean the reason why we build pickle play because there's nothing like it right there is nothing that brought all these pieces together and that's been our vision from day one and why we why we wanted to build it it's more than. Nothing wrong with what exists but there it's more than having one thing for courts or one thing for scheduling or one thing you know.
00:42:14
Speaker
For this or that So I would say obviously competition is coming. There's more and more I get I actually get people reach out Quite a bit. That's like Well, we're just gonna build an app to compete with you. Yeah, I've heard that many many times and That's fine. And you know, there are going to be other apps. There's no business that has no competition. So there's we're not You know, we're not
00:42:42
Speaker
dumb enough to think that that's ever going to happen. But I just know how hard it is and has been. And it's quite the journey in the process to build something to the magnitude that we've built. It's very, very hard. And honestly, you know, if you knew how hard it was going to be, you probably wouldn't do it right. But it's, it's, it's not as easy. So when people
00:43:04
Speaker
Some have been in threatening ways, some in non-threatening ways say, hey, we're just going to build an app and do what you're doing. It's like, I'm to the point where I'm confident enough in our journey and what we've built to be like, if that's what you choose, go for it. It's much harder than people think. Yeah. Do you want to take this moment to just say anything to those people? No.
00:43:31
Speaker
No, I mean, honestly, I just tell people that's fine. Like, if you, you know, it's, it's very expensive. It's very difficult. It's very, very, it's very hard. So just people from the outside in can just say, hey, I'm going to build this.
00:43:53
Speaker
Even if you build it, you have to market it. You have to get people to actually use it. You have to, you know, um, so anyways, I'll stop that rant, but anyways, it just, it is so hard. And, um, I'm now, I know three years in, like how hard it is that, uh, Yeah, I'm just messing around. Um, but I mean, competition is great, right? Like they're going to be able to provide, they might be able to.
00:44:24
Speaker
There's a high likelihood that they'll be able to provide something that you can't, which in the end for the users is great, right? You can't cover every single facet. And competition always, for the most part, benefits the users, which is also great. And it gives you something to kind of, gives you an extra lighting of fire under your ass. Not that you guys haven't already, given what you've built in a short amount of time,
00:44:51
Speaker
Having four kids, I mean, you like put in factor in all those things, but. You have first movers advantage. Yeah, I would say you have first movers advantage, like places to play isn't really in at the same like level. How. Have you have you all thought about like, maybe this hasn't really come up in your minds, but like.
00:45:19
Speaker
How do you keep that advantage and that momentum?
Developing Features and Marketing Strategies
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, we think about it all the time. That's why we're actively on the go. We don't really pause development too much ever at this point because there's just always ways to grow and improve.
00:45:39
Speaker
additional resources that we can be adding. So yeah, not that I don't consider anyone competition. Like you said, competition is good. And one of our members of our advisory board is always like, great, bring it on. It is good. It helps grow the market. It helps grow the need for pickleball apps just in general. So I would say,
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah, talking to our users is most important to us because it helps us stay just on the go. And we have about four things that we are on our list that we want to build next. And just taking time to talk to people to prioritize those to make sure that we are headed in the right direction because there's a lot of routes you can go.
00:46:30
Speaker
with monetization and just in general, like there's a lot of routes we could go and there's a lot of things we could do next, but we need to make sure that it aligns with our ultimate goals and our, our main users can benefit from it. Yeah, totally. You mentioned four new features. Do you have beta testers?
00:46:53
Speaker
Yeah, so I do. We have a group of, we have about 50 ambassadors right now and I'll often ask them for feedback. We meet once a month and I go over new features. I have a few key ones, about a dozen that are pretty active as far as feedback and testing things. And so I have some go-to people that I'll have test out certain things for me, which is extremely helpful.
00:47:23
Speaker
Are you accepting applications for new beta testers? Yes, I am. You're in. Gosh, it's so easy. Yes, we need you. Honestly, it's very, very, very important. Yeah, okay. Well, I'll be sure to connect after this on that. What was your biggest hesitation going into start?
00:47:52
Speaker
Oh, our biggest hesitation is just like, how do we, like, even if we build something great, how do we get it out there and how do we get people to use it? I believe there's a lot of really great apps right now in the app store that are
00:48:12
Speaker
not being used because you have to market the app as well. We do have some hurdles. We can't post on public forums and things that a lot of different businesses can. So we originally had that part of our business model was throwing it out there to some of these public forums and communities to get people testing and using it.
00:48:41
Speaker
not realizing. And it makes sense from a business perspective, but we're not allowed to do that. So that was kind of a hurdle for us at the beginning, too, was, all right, that route isn't going to work. So how do we get users and get into communities? Is one of those communities Reddit?
00:49:07
Speaker
No, actually. Well, I don't know. I've never actually... I don't think we've tried Reddit. I'll have to talk to... I don't know. Have you done Reddit? Have you used it?
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah, I won't say what I use it for. I'm just kidding. I use it for, well, at one point it was Wall Street Bets was a terrible GameStop thing. We won't go into that. But yeah, I think for feedback, it's great. You'll get a lot of honest opinions. You'll also get a lot of cynical opinions. But people are like, for the most part, very truthful and honest. And
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah, I would say as far as the community and being able to get feedback, that's probably one of the easiest ways. Also, given that it's also free, you can't really get that in Instagram. It's just not that type of platform. Reddit has more of that.
00:50:01
Speaker
Yeah. Well, maybe I'll just give it a try after this. Honestly. Um, yeah, there's a pickleball subreddit on there. Okay. And yeah, I don't know. Um, it depends on who, yeah, I'll have to check it out for sure. I would, we have not tried it yet. So, um, it's mostly like Facebook forums and things that we're not allowed to post on it. And it makes sense. So nothing against any of the forums. Um, yeah.
00:50:24
Speaker
Don't want to, don't want to tick anyone off, but we just originally had thought that that would be a great way to get it out there. And that's not the case. So, um, get a little bit more creative. Gotcha. Uh, what's the biggest challenge that you're facing right now?
00:50:43
Speaker
biggest challenge. I would say kind of going back to the demographic of Pickleball, a lot of people are, this is what we used or this is what we have used. So whether it comes to their scheduling platform that they use or their group communication, I would say for clubs and groups using Pickleplay,
00:51:11
Speaker
And we're newer and we have had our fair share of issues in the past with our club or group section. So rightfully so. I think we have over 800 clubs or groups on Pickle Play right now. But not that many are actually using us for their daily scheduling. That is going up. More and more people are using us, which is exciting.
00:51:33
Speaker
I would say there's a lot of, for instance, I just met someone when we were traveling and I tried to tell them about pickle play. And she just kept cutting me off like, no, we use this. And I'm like, I'm just trying to tell you like, I found it like, okay, nevermind.
00:51:49
Speaker
So anyways, like people, um, you know, just get kind of stuck in their ways or not necessarily open because it is a lot of work. So respectfully, I understand it's a lot of work to switch platforms or try something new and, and, or if you tried it over a year ago and had an issue, you may not want to try it again. So, um, I would say our biggest hurdle right now is getting out to those clubs or groups or even private group of friends to, um, try something outside of maybe the multiple resources that they're using now.
00:52:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's probably got to be the toughest thing, right? It's like breaking people out of their current. Yeah, and it makes sense. I mean, if something's working and they're using it, that's fine. We are seeing a lot of new community groups, YMCAs, a lot of newer facilities.
00:52:42
Speaker
or just groups of friends, a lot of newer clubs and groups that are starting with pickle play right out of the gate, which makes it a lot easier to, you know, get your users using versus switching is a little bit more challenging. Yeah. Gotcha.
00:53:00
Speaker
What is next for Pickle Play? You mentioned the four new features. I won't try and pry into that because I'm sure you don't want to disclose that. But is there something that you could tell some of these listeners as far as what they could look forward to as far as growth, maybe within this year or the next year?
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah, so this year we have a lot of great plans. So one is just revamping, taking feedback and just continuing to improve our existing app. Having additional benefit to our pro subscribers, unlocking content each month for that $1.99 or $20 a year benefit.
00:53:41
Speaker
But we also have some pretty major development that we're just pausing to navigate which route to go. But clubs and groups are starting to use us. Our website version syncs with our mobile app. So now you can access it on your laptop or your mobile phone.
00:53:57
Speaker
And developing additional resources for clubs or groups is what's next for Pickle Play. So right now we can collect payments even for events. You can send email blasts to your members. You can do a lot on our web version that most people don't know that you can do. So having just more resources to help organize play, I guess, is next on the list for Pickle Play. Yeah.
00:54:27
Speaker
That's exciting. I would like to be taken out of these group text messages, especially when there's a green text bubble. So that'll be nice. Yes. Is there a book that you've read that's changed your life? Oh, that is a great question. I really...
00:54:53
Speaker
My husband reads a lot of business books and he has some that really have and honestly, I would say I really don't have a specific book that's coming just to the top of my mind. I have some religious beliefs and I'm a Christian and so I have like some books just on
00:55:19
Speaker
reflecting what we believe in in our daily life and how we can impact other people positively. Sorry, I don't have a great answer for you there. Something that did come out of that is just faith. Whatever people believe in, it's definitely becoming more and more evident that faith in general, just having faith is very important.
00:55:49
Speaker
Let's see, what advice would you have for someone who wants to start a business in Pickleball? A business in Pickleball. I mean, it's the right time and the right space. So I would say there's a wave going through. I would say,
00:56:12
Speaker
to talk to as many people as you can in this space, people that you look up to, people that you respect, people that own a business in this space and try to gather as much information as you can and become a pickleball player yourself, you know, if you're not already, if you're looking to start a business in this space. We're looking to solve
00:56:37
Speaker
pain points in a growing sport. So if your business is going to solve someone's problem or help make their life better, then I would say you should go for it. That's a great place to start with.
Advice for Aspiring Pickleball Entrepreneurs
00:56:50
Speaker
Any idea is solve a problem, not like I want to make X amount of money or want to do it for maybe like a tension or cloud. It's like solve a problem and.
00:57:03
Speaker
That would generally lead to those things that you want later on, but, um, come out with a lot more creative ideas and solutions when you start with the problem. Um, cool. Well, we're like about on the hour. So I just want to give you this opportunity to, uh, just plug away where can people find, uh, more, more information about you and pickle play.
00:57:27
Speaker
Yeah, so our website is pickleplay.com. It's pretty easy. You can find download links. You can just search in the app store, Pickle Play. It's all one word, Pickle Play, and it's a free download. So if you haven't downloaded our app, I would love to have you download Android or iOS.
00:57:45
Speaker
Get on there, create a profile, make sure your local courts are added to our map screen. And then if you are a club or group leader, check out our website. We have a contact form. I would be happy to set up a demo or talk to you more about our resources. Like I said, we have a web version that syncs to our mobile app now. And we really are helping a lot of groups post their schedule, track who's going, even collect payment for those events.
00:58:12
Speaker
Yeah. We'd love to have you guys check out pickle play and spread it in your community too. Like I said, it's hard for us to get our name out everywhere. So, um, we'd love to have, have, um, people telling their friends and family about pickle play too. Yeah. I didn't know. Uh, I didn't know about the payment part. That's very interesting. Uh, that's, that's an awesome feature. And yeah, we have it going on in Austin. One last question.
00:58:39
Speaker
Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to talk about? Oh, I came in with no expectations. Just wanted to have a conversation with you. So no, I've, I appreciate everything you've asked me. I think, um, it's great to get a behind the scenes look at what we've been doing and, and just really appreciate your time and asking me to be here.
00:59:01
Speaker
Yeah, likewise. Yeah, thank you very much for sharing your insights, sharing what it's like to be a founder, female founder, having a family and the trials that you go through as a founder and.
00:59:17
Speaker
Lending that out for others to kind of live vicariously through you and whether they were mistakes or lessons or just achievements. Someone out there is listening and hopefully they feel inspired and motivated to start a business. Thanks to you. Thank you so much.