Fund me, KC: MatchOn serves up virtual tennis club
August 3, 2016 | Startland News Staff
Startland News is continuing its segment to highlight area entrepreneurs’ efforts to accelerate their businesses. This is an opportunity for entrepreneurs — like MatchOn founder Garrett Gates — to share their stories to gain a little help from their supporters. Back MatchOn’s Indiegogo campaign here.
Garrett Gates
Who are you?
Garrett Gates, founder and CEO of MatchOn.
What does MatchOn do?
We make arranging a tennis match or getting a sub easy, while helping you to centralize and grow your tennis network. MatchOn is largely about expanding on some of the things I’ve seen work here in Kansas City and begin to automate them for all tennis players around the world.
How’s it work?
MatchOn is a mobile tennis club, which is changing the traditional manual tennis processes of brick-and-mortar clubs, and finding and arranging games. We enable players to easily invite others to matches. The app also automatically keeps track of the people it’s previously matched players with, which helps centralize tennis contacts in one place.
If you need a sub, the app will help you find a new player at a similar skill level to play with. MatchOn even works on the go, because your virtual tennis club is not confined to just one club location. The app can help you arrange a match and get a sub no matter where you are in the US.
How much do you hope to raise?
$38,000
What do you plan to use the funds for?
Right now we have designed and specced out the application. But the app is not yet downloadable in the iOS or Android stores. We are using the funds to bring our prototype application to life. These funds will allow us to provide a much-needed service to all tennis players.
How are you differentiating your campaign or bringing attention to it?
Both my parents are entrepreneurs in the Kansas City tennis space, so I grew up around the sport.
My dad, Kirkland Gates, was the founder of the Tencap Rating System, which is a golf-like handicap for tennis with 150,000 rated players internationally. My mom, Kathy Gates, created the largest tennis league in Kansas City that uses that rating system.
I plan to leverage our family’s tennis connections to help get the word out and ensure a successful campaign.
Is there anything quirky about your campaign?
We think we’ve got a pretty cool campaign video!
Any advice for launching a crowdfunding campaign?
The number one thing I can say is do as much promoting as you can before and during the campaign. The first few days are critical to the campaigns success. No one will want to donate to a campaign that has been around for 10 days and hasn’t raised any money. It will take you at least one to two months to get ready to launch your crowdfunding campaign.
If you or your startup is running a crowdfunding campaign, let us know by contacting news@startlandnews.com.
Featured Business
2016 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
Plexpod acquires Think Big Coworking, expanding KC footprint
Plexpod isn’t playing. Amid Kansas City’s competitive coworking market, Plexpod is doubling down with the acquisition of Think Big Coworking’s 1712 Main Street location, Plexpod founder Gerald Smith said. The acquisition adds more than 30,000 square feet of space to Plexpod’s already large footprint in the area and forges a new partnership between the two…
Raaxo takes shape after pivot from Aphrodite Bra Co’s body scan concept
Despite its use of body-mapping technology, Aphrodite Bra Company wasn’t the right fit for customers’ needs, said Carlanda McKinney, founder of the newly rebooted custom intimates company Raaxo. “Aphrodite had been stuck in the starting-up space,” she said. “We’d never really gotten enough sales or enough traction to say, ‘We’re launched,’ or, ‘We’re in business.’…
Serial entrepreneur leverages past success for Bridge Space coworking project
Bridge Space will be more than a coworking office, Ben Rao said. He hopes it will be the heart of Lee’s Summit’s blossoming entrepreneurial ecosystem. “My No. 1 goal is to accelerate entrepreneurs’ success,” said Rao, Bridge Space founder and a serial entrepreneur himself. “It’s an opportunity for me to build something that would make…
KC mom’s humble entrepreneurial journey draws on healing power of creativity
Huddled in her parents’ basement, between the cribs of her crying twin babies, Keliah Smith began to draw. She was unemployed and feeling emotionally drained. The relationship with her children’s father had soured. Her escape: the stylus and smartphone in her hands. The Kansas City mother drew what she didn’t see in the mirror, she…