Managing a book club? Rugby team? Coding meetup? TeamSnap wants to help.
Boulder-based TeamSnap is an online platform for teams and clubs to communicate and stay organized. It was founded in 2009 by Dave DuPont, who struggled with the inefficiencies he discovered as the assistant coach for his son’s lacrosse team. He knew there must be an easier way.
It wasn't just DuPont who felt this frustration.
“People tell us all the time, 'I signed up to coach because I want to work with the kids,'” said general manager and chief growth officer Ken McDonald. “'I want to have an impact on the kids the way a coach had an impact with me, but I’m spending all my time on the logistics.'”
“We did a survey recently and coaches said they saved 10 plus hours a month to manage their team."
Enter Teamsnap, which offers both a website and app that allows teams, leagues and other clubs to create their own pages. There, they can organize rosters and schedules, effectively communicate any changes and (as of the company's 2017 FanAppEvents acquisition), schedule tournaments. There's also money collecting tools, club-wide chat services and a free service option for groups of up to 20 individuals.
Bigger teams, or those that want additional features, can opt for the $9.99 per month service, which includes all of the free options and can accommodate up to 30 team members. This track includes the options for email alerts and TeamSnap’s highlight video service, a tool for taking and posting videos on team pages directly from the TeamSnap app.
In the nearly nine years of operation, TeamSnap has gotten the attention of both users and funding providers alike. Its 20 million-strong client base is diverse, with users representing youth sports, e-sport teams, book clubs and even firefighters and search and rescue professionals, McDonald told Colorado Inno.
On the funding side, TeamSnap has raised $45 million thus far, and participated in a handful of acquisitions; in addition to FanAppEvents, TeamSnap acquired four other smaller startups including Korrio, EasyTeamManager Rteamsite and Weplay.
Looking ahead, McDonald said that the TeamSnap team doesn’t plan to add too many more features to the service, but that they want to perfect the options they already have — such as including payment options for teams through the platform and task management (think, figuring out whose turn is it to bring the popsicles or run the clock).
All in all, TeamSnap wants to keep doing what it's doing: helping clubs, groups and teams spend more time doing what they love and less time working through logistics.
“We did a survey recently and coaches said they saved 10 plus hours a month to manage their team,” McDonald said. “You think about anything that saves you that kind of time —that’s a huge deal."
