Why sports app Spectator decided to pivot

Two weeks after arriving at the NMotion Accelerator in Lincoln, Nebraska, Jon Myers of Spectator realized that in order to survive, his company would have to reimagine what it was. “We didn’t have a real buyer. Everybody loved the service, they loved what it could do, but nobody was willing to pay for it,” Myers said of their original sports app…

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Two weeks after arriving at the NMotion Accelerator in Lincoln, Nebraska, Jon Myers of Spectator realized that in order to survive, his company would have to reimagine what it was.

“We didn’t have a real buyer. Everybody loved the service, they loved what it could do, but nobody was willing to pay for it,” Myers said of their original sports app idea. “To become a scalable business and to even last more than a year, you need to make money.”

While Jon was attending the University of Iowa, he and his partner Brandon Keifer created the phone and tablet app called Spectator, which enabled its users to keep track of their favorite high school sports team.

“Basically like an ESPN app for high school sports,” said Myers. The original Spectator app kept track of stats, scores and player rosters for the largest 48 high school sports teams in Iowa. Silicon Prairie News did an article on the original app.

Committed to contributing

Since he was young, Myers has always been passionate about high school sports. So whatever his group decided to do, he wanted to make sure he was still contributing to what he was passionate about.

“We’re still in the high school sports space,” Myers said. “While building the app, we found out about a lot of problems that exist within the high school sports world, specifically when it comes to booster club programs. The current process booster clubs use to gain members is full of friction that can prevent members from signing up. So we thought, what could we do about that?”

With Demo Day, comes a new Spectator

The guys at Spectator have come up with a new platform that solves problems for booster clubs to help them raise more funds, gain more members and overall simplify their relationship with their members.

On Tuesday, July 28th, NMotion will host its annual Demo Day at the Rococo Theatre in downtown Lincoln. Myers and Keifer are excited to show the world the new Spectator.

“It’s not live yet. We’ve already had school’s request to use the new program, but it’s not live just yet,” Myers said. “We’re making demo day our launch day, and we hope to get those schools who have requested it on it right away.”

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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