We were seeing team after team post that they were working with Bella Football, and of course because we support the brands who support our clubs, we reached out to see what they were all about…

Who are you and what's your role with Bella Football?
My name is Jason, I'm the founder of Bella Football, an app to help soccer clubs manage and grow organically.

Personally, I've been playing soccer since my dad enrolled me in a YMCA league in the early 90s. The only time I haven't played in my life was during high school, and that was because I transferred school districts and was suddenly playing with a bunch of guys I'd be competing against for years—so I instead I competed in tennis, baseball, wrestling, basketball, and cross country. In college, I went out for the soccer club and it rekindled my love for the game. I've been playing 2-3 days a week for the last 15 years and I'm thankful for every day that I can boot up and kick around.

Professionally, I work in product design and tech. I didn't plan to work in tech or to be an entrepreneur, but as a kid I made clan websites for online computer games like Diablo, and when I got to graduate school (in the English department) and still didn't have a clear plan for paying back my student loans, I was shocked to learn people got paid to build websites because I thought it was a hobbiest activity.

What services do you provide and what inspired Bella to be founded?
Bella Football is a mobile app to manage and grow your soccer club. As somebody with past experience managing elite amateur squads, I spent a lot of time in email, WhatsApp, and spreadsheets, and a lot of communication was redundant and manual.

I started Bella Football to help managers reduce the amount of time they spend on operations, through features like automated scheduling with SMS reminders to increase RSVP rates, and a robust chat feature that offers the same feature set as Slack or WhatsApp, so that clubs could centralize all communication and scheduling into a single app.

Are there competitors and what separates your services from anybody else?
There aren't any direct competitors to Bella Football (but we expect copycats soon), and our biggest competition are traditional apps like email, SMS, WhatsApp, GroupMe, Messenger, Telegram, spreadsheets, etc. I've interviewed clubs all the way up to the EFL League Two and USL Championship, and the managers are using spreadsheets, monthly printouts that quickly go out of date, Google Docs for itineraries, and WhatsApp for managing communication and scheduling updates.

For indirect competitors, there are pure B2B SaaS offerings like Kairos Sports HQ, which focuses on the most elite clubs, like those in the EFL Championship, Canadian Premier League, and Major League Soccer. Then there are soccer-specific administration products like PlayMetrics, which focuses on all the financial operations of youth clubs doing revenue of $1M annually. The most widely known products at the amateur level are freemium offerings that are multi-sport team and club management, like TeamSnap, GameChanger, Heja, and SportsYou.

What's unique about Bella Football, compared to other club management products, is:

· Bella Football is for the beautiful game—we're building product and a brand specifically for the global football community, and we have ambitions to be the product of choice from U7 all the way to the Premier League. Unlike other apps, you can take your football profile and network with you when you change clubs and advance your playing career.

· Managers can use the app in solo mode and automate their scheduling without needing their roster to download the app or sign up. Once the organizer schedules an event, they can invite people in their mobile contacts, and invitees can RSVP directly from a link in the SMS.

· Bella Football is a social network, so you can connect with coaches and players from all around the country and world. You can search the network by first and last name or browse people by location (and filter for field position or whether somebody is looking for a new team). New people are joining the platform every day, so it's a great way to keep new talent organically coming into your club. I should also add that the network is more similar to LinkedIn than Facebook. Think of your profile as your professional football CV, whether you're a recreational player, a semi-pro, on a U15 team, or a professional. Oh, and you can also browse teams by location.

· Bella Football is managers, staff, and players of all skill level, and more importantly, it's for community. Friends and family can join group chats and can be invited to events through the platform—they don't even need to have the app to be invited or to RSVP to events.

Who uses Bella? Do you have any examples of leagues or teams who utilize it and how they get the most out of it?
Our initial product is designed for use by elite adult teams, and we count NISA pro teams such as the Maryland Bobcats, Bay Cities FC, and Flower City Union as early adopters, as well as pro-am teams in the UWS and UWS2 like FC Austin Elite, KC Courage, and Livonia City FC.

We have many clubs from national leagues like the UPSL (Potros FC), WPSL (FC Berlin), NISA Nation (Temecula FC, Elite Metro), and regional leagues like the Midwest Premier League (AFC Columbia, Inter Detroit) and Eastern Premier Soccer League (Fredericksburg City United).

There are also clubs from historical local leagues like the Cosmopolitan Soccer League (NY International FC), Buffalo & District Soccer League (Buffalo Italia FC, Sharpshooters FC, Borussia Bees, Rance FC, Tonawanda United), and the San Francisco Soccer Football League (Inter SF, Indy SF). We also have clubs across the pond like Upminster Barn (Brentwood League) and Gillingham Town FC (Kent County League).

I would also be remiss to not shout out Space United, who has teams in Los Angeles, Seattle, Madrid (Spain), and Florida, and was one of the earliest clubs to join the platform. We have sky-high dreams at Bella Football, so it helps to have space engineers around, haha.

As up to date as Bella is, how do you keep ahead of the needs of users? How often do you assess what's working and start planning for change?
First, we're building a community. We have a dedicated support channel that every user is invited to when they sign up, so people are always posting about feature requests and bugs, and also helping each other.

We also have a private partners channel for managers of the clubs that are the most active on the platform. They always bring great ideas for how to evolve the app and ensure it's the best product available for elite adult soccer clubs.

Beyond our community, we do user interviews every week with club presidents, operations directors, coaches, and players, from clubs at all levels of the pyramid in the US, Canada, UK, and other countries. I've personally spoke to 150 people about how they manage their club.

The mobile app will always be free and it will be the best way to build up your network of footballers, whether for pickup and rec league, or as professional contacts like S&C coaches, referees, managers, trainers, or other semi-pro and professional players. More than that, anybody can invite their network to chat or participate in events, so it's not just a social media app, it's about bringing community together to play football. We want people to get involved as much as possible, and to be out meeting new people, forging new friendships, and discovering new opportunities to play.

Finally, I'd like to put in a plug to join Bella Football in our mission to be the biggest network of football professionals, players, and supporters in the world: I'm looking for a technical co-founder and/or angel investors who believe in Bella Football's vision. Please reach out and we'll make time to talk!

Jason
Founder of Bella Football