We’re excited to introduce you to Lewis Black and Midori Koide, co-founders at GoodRec. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lewis and Midori below.
Alright, Lewis and Midori, thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
The aim of GoodRec is to make it as easy as possible to find and join sports games in your city. Just tap the app, join a game, and show up on the day. We take care of the rest.
It’s a familiar story: people around you slowly stop playing the sports they loved as kids. We are all so busy that it’s hard to organize a game, and so many of us end up losing touch with the sport we love.
We started GoodRec when this same story became our reality. After college, we were too busy to commit to long-term leagues and struggled to find groups to play with when moving to new cities. We wanted a more flexible and instant way to play sports, and so we built the GoodRec app.
The first GoodRec game ever played was during the pandemic. We used backpacks on the ground to mark the goals. That was in Brooklyn 3 years ago. It didn’t matter that we didn’t have the perfect field setup, vibes were high and we got to play the sport we love. That’s what GoodRec is about: bringing people together through sport.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
When we both moved abroad after graduating in the UK, we found it difficult to find new soccer and volleyball teams. We started GoodRec so that we could meet new people whilst playing our favorite sports. The communities we met became a foundational part of our social lives for the years to come.
We want to create games that people crave. Have you ever been a part of a pickup group or league that you look forward to all week? Groups where you overengineer your tactics, formation, or line changes. Games that get replayed in your head all of next week. Groups that make you turn your phone on “do not disturb” while you’re at work because the group chat is popping off. We’ve been lucky enough to be a part of groups like these and we’re chasing that feeling. We want to make it easy to find and join groups like these in every city in the world with GoodRec.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
“The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries inspired us to build an MVP and launch quickly. We built the app in a few months and tested the product before investing much capital.
We bootstrapped the company in year one. Since people sign up for games in advance on the app, we were able to collect payments before the game and use the funds to reserve the field and buy the equipment for every game.
After seeing users increase thanks to word of mouth taking off, we knew we had a business with huge potential to grow. We ended up raising a pre-seed round in 2021 and expanded to other cities in North America.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
Word of mouth is the key driver of our user growth week to week. People want to play with their friends and invite them to games they’re signed up to. We use social media to find the first groups of players and have a shareable link for each game that people can send to their friends.
At the same time, GoodRec focuses heavily on the overall game experience. The traditional way of joining a pickup game is to show up to a park or open court. Often these pickup games are disorganized with either not enough players, being overcrowded, or not having the correct equipment.
At GoodRec games we have an organiser called the “Host” who becomes an integral part of running a great game experience. The Host welcomes you when you arrive, hands out the equipment, makes sure the game starts on time and balances the teams during play. GoodRec Hosts become key members of the community. Many games fill up 2 weeks in advance because people want to guarantee they can play in a game with their favorite Host.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.goodrec.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodrecsports
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/goodrec
