We’ve been super busy building Boosta since we last updated you in December, but needed to carve out some time and share some exciting updates as well as give you a glimpse into what the rest of the year has in store.
- Moving into the enterprise space ahead of schedule
- Continuing to drive growth within our sports category
- Updates on fundraising & how you can help
- Testing the effectiveness of Boosta beyond sports
Moving Into The Enterprise Space Ahead Of Schedule, Allowing Us To Add Subscribers Thousands At A Time.
Our current roster of private soccer coaches have helped us prove the effectiveness of training on the Boosta platform over the last year as they are already scaling their 1-to-1 business, by converting their large built-in audiences into subscribers.
With positive validation from our trainers, endless testimonials from players & parents and lot’s of favorable data it’s time to adopt an enterprise model. We are confident we will accelerate growth and further drive market adoption within the soccer category with our “club model”, where partnerships with large established soccer clubs will allow us to add subscribers at an incredible rate.
Here’s a quick overview of the U.S. Soccer Club landscape:
- There are around 5,000 soccer clubs
- 3MM+ club soccer players
- The U.S. is the #1 country in the world for participation in youth soccer
We know this world. We come from this world. After a decade of agency work conducting continuous research to inform marketing strategy for some of the largest brands in soccer, we can confidently say we are experts in grassroots soccer in the U.S. Over the years we’ve learned exactly what the clubs are after and what they need. They are all looking to elevate the training experience, improve player development and make their club more attractive. Boosta does all of this, providing an innovative virtual training environment that allows players and coaches a new level of connection and the ability to train 1to1 like never before. All-important, Boosta also adds a new revenue stream at zero upfront cost to the club!
With such a massive opportunity in front of us, it gives us great pleasure to announce that we will be adding one of the most connected figures in grassroots soccer to ensure we make an immediate impact.
- Boosta is adding Joe Elsmore as Global Director of Sports Marketing!
- Born and raised in SOCCERTOWN USA, Kearny, NJ and starred collegiately at NC State as Team Captain and All-Conference.
- Center Referee at the Women’s NCAA 1993 National Championship Match.
- 30+ years of experience in the Soccer Industry as Nike Director North America Soccer Sports Marketing.
- Directly responsible for signing and serving legendary Nike athletes, Mia Hamm, Landon Donovan, Abby Wambach, Clint Dempsey, Alex Morgan, Tim Howard, Megan Rapinoe, Christian Pulisic, as well as rising star Olivia Moultrie who at age 13 became the youngest American women’s soccer player to turn professional.
- At the helm of Nike’s long-standing partnership with the United States Soccer Federation that began in 1995 and continues today.
- Led Nike’s Investment and support of the NWSL as Nike currently supplies the Kit and Ball to all NWSL Teams.
- Facilitated Nike sponsorship of US Youth Soccer, US Club Soccer, ECNL along with all Championships and Programs that each of these Organizations execute.
- Managed Nike’s past and current relationships with many of the legendary YouthSoccer Clubs in the United States such as: Seacoast United, PDA, Concorde Fire, Seattle Crossfire, Chicago Sockers, FC Stars of Mass, Ohio Elite, Dallas Texans, San Diego Surf, Irvine Strikers, Pateadores, So Cal United, Legends,Arsenal, St. Louis Scott Gallagher, Real Colorado, Richmond Strikers, San Juan SC, FC Portland, Oregon Premier, and many others.
…making Nike the most coveted brand partner at the grassroots level, bar none.
Joe’s contact information going forward will be:
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (503) 816-0856
“I am honored to join the Boosta Team on the journey to help guide the development of Soccer Players through innovative technology that broadens the connection between Coaches and Athletes!”
Joe Elsmore
Boosta, Director of Sports Marketing
As we set out on our club soccer attack we decided to first get started in our own backyard. We approached Mauricio Ingrassia, Founder & Club Director of Beach Futbol Club, a very well-respected and accomplished coach. Mauricio has grown the Long Beach, CA based program into a top 50 nationally-ranked club for both boys and girls with hundreds of alums in college, the pros, and international teams. (Note, before Olivia Moultire signed her pro contract with Nike she was playing for Beach FC, even though she lived in the Valley!)
Tim Donnelly and Maurico actually met over 20 years ago while Mauricio was coaching Tim’s sister at Long Beach City College. As a Club Director who is truly passionate and dedicated to player development we were excited to bring the Boosta platform to Mauricio & Beach FC. Mauricio immediately recognized how Boosta could be incorporated into the club program to help enhance the year-round training experience for each of his players but more importantly make a positive impact on the culture of the entire club.
“At Beach we want to touch hearts. We win their heart, if/when our players fall in love with the ball. Boosta keeps us in constant touch and offers a new form of motivation to help us achieve that.”
Mauricio Ingrassia
Beach FC Founder & Club Director
Continuing To Drive Growth Within Our Sports Category
We continue to prepare and establish prominent sports to the platform, where we look to build upon the learnings and mirror the success of soccer. We handpick top trainers, representing a range of disciplines within that sport who prove the effectiveness of Boosta, drive adoption and pave the way for larger B2B partnerships within each sport.
Soccer
In our last update we had just launched our 2nd soccer trainer alongside iNSAiNZ, here is the snapshot of the soccer category today:
- 6 LIVE trainer channels
- 10 trainers preparing their channels to go live
- Club Soccer Strategy Plan
Basketball
- Basketball will be our second live sports category.
- We have active conversations with category director candidates.
- Our category director is critical for us as they bring both credibility & authenticity to our conversations with potential basketball trainers & coaches.
- Strategically targeted & identified first group of basketball trainers.
- We have already had preliminary conversations with the largest youth basketball organizations in the country.
Golf
We know how critically important the first Trainer for a category is so we are thrilled to have our first trainer golf live: Train1to1 with Ryan Young!
- Golf Trainer #1: Ryan Young
- Director of Instructions, Chambers Bay, WA
- USPGA Class A License
- Watch Ryan Young promote Boosta on his YouTube videos
- Our Director of Golf Partnerships is David Hunter (fmr. Cleveland, Devereux) who oversees all trainer accounts and responsible for the day-to-day liaising with contracted trainers.
Baseball / Softball
We are very excited about the opportunity for Boosta & Diamond sports – baseball, fast-pitch softball, slow-pitch softball.
Core participation in our targeted sports
# of kids ages 6 to 17 who participated on a regular basis in the U.S. in 2019
- Soccer: 3,691,000
- Golf: 2,500,000
- Basketball: 7,498,000
- Baseball/Softball: 7,180,000
- Football: 3,856,000
- Track & Field: 1,485,000
Source: Aspen Institute 2020 State of Play Report
Updates On Fundraising & How You Can Help
- To date we have raised $250K! We are now looking to raise an additional $200K on our existing SAFE note.
- We want to fill up this F&F round and are willing to oversubscribe.
Our F&F round will provide the operating capital to cover the below:
- Android
- Development has begun
- Enterprise Development (B2B)
- Backend Dashboard Enhancements
- Category Development (B2B2C)
- Capital for infrastructure and support for our established categories
- Legal (Patents & Trademark)
- Patents
- Our step-by-step seems simple and that is the beauty of it, but those little details in our system are proving to make the difference in virtual training. Our (6) patents cover the entire system and covers us for the future
- Systems and methods for:
- a user interface for sports and movement training
- a trainer user interface for sports and movement training
- a platform and database for sports and movement training
- automatic feedback for sports and movement training with key event detection and feedback
- for generating an overlay for automatic feedback for sports and movement training using an overlay
- for automatic feedback for sports and movement training incorporating sensor data
- Trademark
- Our biggest differentiator is our ability to Train 1to1 at scale
- We’ve trademarked “Train 1to1”
- We also currently own every post on Instagram with the #train1to1 hashtag
- Patents
Testing The Effectiveness Of Boosta Beyond Sports
Yes, we are very focused on this next phase of growth by means of the sports category but as we have said from the beginning, the larger vision for Boosta certainly includes making an impact far beyond sports. Repeatedly, we find ourselves in conversations around Boosta supplementing in-person sessions for teachers across a broad spectrum of learning (Sport, Lifestyle, Education, Corporate Training, etc). Below are a few examples where through direct relationships things have naturally progressed.
- Beauty Industry (Industry Size: $380.2 Billion)
- When it comes to things you learn in a step-by-step manner, it’s no secret that cutting & styling hair is a perfect fit. The “See-do” method is how educators train stylists.
- We met with Bishops Cuts/Color
- Corporate Stores/Locations: 12
- Franchises: 50+ around the country
- They were thrilled to see how much more effective Boosta can be as a tool to teach their stylist nationwide verses using the LMS they’re currently using
“Bishops is excited to be building a content library with Boosta to benefit stylists of all levels.”
Holly Johnson
Bishops, COO
- Corporate Training (Industry Size: $357 Billion)
- Think about the last time you had to do corporate training, now think about how bad it was
- We are having initial conversations with a VP of Sales for a very large company who can see Boosta being a unique & effective training tool for them to keep their staff educated on their products & services
