Website:  Team Pages

Interview With: Mike Tan

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

The founders of TeamPages.com are Mike Tan, Jonathan Kerr, and Adam Palmblad.

What is your background and qualifications?

We’ve all been playing sports since we were small kids and are extremely passionate about trying to make the lives of coaches, parents, and athletes easier when it comes to managing their teams and athletics lives. Before starting TeamPages, we have all been involved with various successful start-ups and other venture backed companies. Together, we have a combination of over 21 years of business and web development experience.

What does your website do?

TeamPages provides amateur sport teams with simple and easy to use websites to post team information and send updates all in one place.  All websites can easily be created in less than 4 minutes with just a few clicks. We believe coaches and managers are stretched for time, spending too much time emailing, updating, and returning messages.  TeamPages solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve communication between coaches, parents and players by updating the team in real time and ensuring the information only be communicated once.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

Currently, TeamPages earns revenue from advertising. To date, we have only been using Google Adsense. This fall we will be opening up the doors to local and national advertisers and we will also be launching our new premium service.

How have your marketed your site?

We are constantly out at conference, local sporting events, and on the phone talking to as many coaches as possible.  However, I would say most of our growth has come from coaches who are using TeamPages talking to other coaches about our service.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

At TeamPages, we’ve been through all three stages. We started off in 2006 by winning a student business plan competition which provided us with $10,000 to start up. From there we bootstrapped out of my one bedroom apartment, lived off of kraft dinner and canned soup, and raised a friends and family round over Christmas (instead of presents we received investments from our parents and friends). In September 2007, we placed 2nd in the New Ventures BC Competition and won $25,000 in cash. And in October of 2007, we raised our first round from Burda Digital Ventures and local Angels, and were finally able to move out of my one bedroom apartment (by which point we had 7 people working out of).

Are You currently looking for funding?

We are currently exploring various partnership opportunities and private equity, however it is not an immediate need for our business to grow.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

Ruby on Rails, AJAX, javascript, Mongrel, Amazon S3

What is your favorite feature on your website?

Our favorite features of TeamPages are the ability to post all of your teams information onto one simple and easy to use team website and that any time you make a change to the schedule or website everyone on your team will receive an email update.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

We feel that within 2 years from now everyone involved with amateur sports (coaches, parents, players, and fans, like grandma and grandpa), will be able to get all their updates about their team such as schedule changes, scores, and stats in real time.