At the start of the summer, Boston was already experiencing a new innovation to its public tennis courts. For the first time, it was being taken online, where (with the help of a local startup), players who had never met could connect to help make more efficient use of the courts.
PlayLocal, which began as the project of Babson graduates Anmol Wassan and Brent Colson, expanded to Boston after slowly growing from other local communities. So far, the experiment has been a success. BostInno recently caught up with the PlayLocal founders for a few questions on where they are, and where they're going.
Hayden Bird: Do you have any advice for people who see your app and are on the fence about it? After all, it requires a small leap of faith to go meet someone you don't know and play tennis with them.
Anmol and Brent: We believe our app actually puts the social in social networking where you meet real people in real life playing a sport you both really love. It definitely takes a leap of faith to go meet someone but there are three big benefits to just a blind meet up:
- Meeting someone who shares your interest for the sport
- Is looking for the same things (people with the same skill level, age group, etc.)
- Meeting for the first time is in a public place
Hopefully, these benefits take the sting out of meeting new people. Hey! If you hit it off, you could have a lifelong friendship!
What was your expectation going into this year (especially the late spring and summer), knowing that it would be the launch of PlayLocal in Boston? Were you nervous at all about how it would be received by a larger community?
Given the research we did last year and the love Bostonians have for sports in general, we felt confident we would have a strong launch. Babson College deserves accolades as well for the preparation they made us go through. Having said that, there is always nervousness when you introduce change and especially because we wanted to do it in a socially responsible way. We also wanted to make sure we learned as much as we could and “made new mistakes." We are fortunate to have received some great feedback to get even better.
How has the reception been so far for PlayLocal among Boston's tennis community?
We have been thrilled by the response and not just from the players but the recreation departments we partner with. We are even more excited that so many parks and recreation departments share our ethos of creating a product that is accessible to everyone. Kudos to them for taking on this initiative. We are humbled by the trust they have shown in us to deliver on the promise of “Play More. PlayLocal.”
We have also been encouraged with the reception from the Boston tennis community that has partnered with us to launch the first Boston Tennis Week in August. As part of our mission to encourage people to play more, we have featured many tennis focused startups and leagues in the area and are currently collaborating with USTA New England in many ways including finding ways to get more kids to experience the thrill of competition with Play Days.
What would you consider as the goal for PlayLocal in Boston? What's the dream scenario that you hope to reach at some point?
The dream scenario for us would be to see a lot more folks currently sitting on the fence playing more sports. There are too many of us who neglect our health or don’t pursue activities that we enjoy because life gets in the way. PlayLocal is focused on addressing exactly that issue and reducing the barriers to get people to play more. We believe if we do that, investments in our sports infrastructure would increase and we would have a healthier community overall. Finally, we would love to have every single community in New England on PlayLocal in order for every person to benefit from the platform we are building.
In the past you've mentioned an eventual interest in possibly expanding beyond just tennis. Are you considering doing that any time soon, or are you staying focused on just tennis for the time being?
Absolutely! Our team understands the importance of focus for a startup though and we are focused on tennis for the time being and hopefully make that an awesome experience before expanding to other sports.
Image via PlayLocal
