Canadian Entrepreneurs Podcast - FanSaves

So when you first broke into the marketplace, was it a difficult concept to get, uh, prospects to understand the offering?

I would say from the get-go, uh, Chris, my-- Chris is my co-founder, [chuckles] um, the, the hockey player that broke his finger.

Um, Chris and I, our background was always, you know, strong in marketing and sales.

Um, and coming from that industry, we were able to say, "Hey, we've been in your shoes." So we're B2B.

We sell to the team, the team licenses Fan Saves from us, and then they resell it to their sponsors.

So it wasn't hard on that end.

Um, the difficulty Chris and I w- uh, always ran into was we're non-technical co-founders.

So the most-

Mm-hmm

...

in the digital space I did was building websites and, you know, social media.

But coding an app back then, especially before the age of AI, um, and finding the right developers That was always kind of what slowed us down in the sense that obviously we wanted to have a good product, um, but we had to ensure that we had the right people building it.

So for us, um, our marketing and our sales always grew faster than our product.

Um, and selling the idea and the concept of FanSavves in the early days was really the easy part.

Then came the part about let's make sure we have the right product, um, that can sustain this growth.

So, um, yeah, I mean, it was always very easy to go into teams and say, "Hey, our product can help make you more sponsorship dollars.

Are you in?" And they're like, "No-brainer." [chuckles]

[chuckles] Well, it's interesting 'cause you s- you said you started nine years ago, and I can remember so many, unfortunately, horror stories from entrepreneurs that paid developers pretty significant amounts of money, didn't get the product they thought they'd get, or even when it was finished, then they wouldn't service it.

Uh, I don't know what happened during that timeframe.

Th- there was a period of about three years, kind of six to nine years ago, where this just seemed to be a very common conversation I was having with other entrepreneurs.

So, uh, you are right.

With AI now, hopefully, um, that, that'll streamline some of that and make it a bit more efficient.

But, uh, that, that's pretty tough to you, you sold something, then you gotta deliver on it, right? That's kind of the message here.

So is there anything you would've done differently back then, knowing what you know now in those early stages? I- I'm just trying to c- come up...

Any lessons you'd wanna pass along to someone that's kinda going through that kinda same approach that you had back then?