Some of the best ideas are born out of a personal experience. If you play 5-a-side football, you will know full well the frustration that comes when a match is cancelled due to lack of players. Irish app 'Kickabout' seeks to make that issue a thing of the past.
Co-founder Andrew Turner told Newstalk.com how it works.
"It has two separate logins, one for players and one for the pitch owners. To give you an analogy it works similarly to Uber where the pitches are the drivers and the players are the passengers", explains Turner. "Pitches promote their times on the app which will be displayed on an interactive map and players will be able to book the pitch and make their game public which means they can find players if they are short."
The goal here is that footballers will not have to cancel games and pitches will not lose out on revenue.
Turner's co-founder Gary O'Toole had been living abroad when he realised there was a gap in the market for such an app. He approached Andrew Turner and Declan McGann, both of whom had experienced similar issues with games being cancelled at the last minute. They began to work together in developing their idea.
"We have gone through the Enterprise Ireland New Frontiers programme phase 1 and 2 and have received investment through the competitive start fund and we are on the HPSU start programme. We began development in summer last year and have been testing a prototype version among users and receiving very positive feedback. So after working on the development over the last 9 months, we are finally ready to launch on June 5th," says Turner.
The app will be free to download on both iOS and Android once it launches on June 5th. Both players and pitch owners can log in and use the service to ensure they never miss a match or lose out on revenue.
Turner outlines the company's vision for the future.
"Our main goal now is to prove the concept works in Ireland, we haves pitches signed up in almost every county. We have identified likely markets to target after Ireland such as Northern Europe. They have high GDP and high population densities of footballers."
You'll find further information about Kickabout here.
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