What is it?
Technology entrepreneurs spot a problem, build a product that solves it, and grow it into a business. They wear many hats — part builder, part researcher, part salesperson — especially in the early days.
In football, that might mean noticing that grassroots teams have no access to the match analysis professionals take for granted, and building an affordable product that gives it to them.
What you'd actually do
Customers
Talk to the people who have the problem — players, coaches, parents, clubs — and learn what they really need.
Building
Design, build or guide the building of a simple first version, then improve it based on feedback.
Growing
Find customers, set prices, partner with clubs and leagues, and work out how to reach more people.
Leading
Raise money, hire a team, set direction and make lots of decisions with incomplete information.
What to learn
Building
Enough coding or no-code skill to create a prototype and talk confidently with engineers.
Product thinking
Understanding users, prioritising what to build and measuring whether it works.
Business basics
Customers, pricing, costs, marketing and how start-ups are funded.
People skills
Pitching, persuading, leading a team — and resilience when things go wrong.
Your roadmap
A step-by-step route from an idea to a growing business. Each stage has its own skills to learn, and an example of what it looks like when building a football product.
- Spot opportunities
- Customer interviews
- Market research
- Competitor analysis
- In football: Footballers don't have access to their own performance statistics
Find a Problem
- Customer discovery
- Value proposition
- Test assumptions
- Landing pages
- Early sign-ups
- In football: Speak to grassroots players and find out what they'd pay for
Validate the Idea
- Prototyping
- UX/UI design
- No-code & AI tools
- Product development
- Rapid iteration
- In football: Manually create player stats and highlights from match footage
Build an MVP
- Early adopters
- User feedback
- Product analytics
- Iteration
- Retention
- In football: Launch with one football venue and learn what players actually use
Launch & Learn
- Pricing
- Revenue models
- Customer retention
- Unit economics
- Product–market fit
- In football: Build a product players repeatedly use and willingly pay for
Find Product–Market Fit
- Marketing
- Sales
- Partnerships
- Fundraising
- Hiring
- Scaling
- In football: Expand across football venues, leagues and new markets
Grow the Business
Tools you'll use
Ways in
Any degree
Founders come from every background; business, computer science and design are common.
Join a start-up
Working at an early-stage company is one of the best ways to learn how it's done.
Just start
Small side projects, hackathons and accelerators let you practise building and selling.
Try it yourself
- Interview five people at your local club about their biggest frustration.
- Build a simple app or website that solves one small part of that problem.
- Get ten real people to use it, then improve it based on what they say.