Shrinking the size, a new way to work out the obstacle
Wooter, a startup that connects people with same sport interests, finally regained its strategy after losing focus.
An instruction logo appears when users open Wooter’s website, “Join Sports Leagues Near You.” Wooter aims to be the platform that serves as the one-stop shop for all the sports and activities in users’ area. The activities available on the website include baseball, basketball, soccer, ping pong and many other sports. People could also find their sports events nearby by easily entering personal interest, age, and zip code.
“The idea comes to my mind a year ago, when I wanted to play soccer but couldn’t find a league,” said by Max Avs, managing partner of Wooter. He said the resources of finding leagues were limited. Therefore, six of their leaderships noticed this market opportunity and soon came up with this idea.
Wooter is growing rapidly with more than 9,000 followers on Twitter now since it was established in 2014. Its pivoted experience, however, is one of the most important factors attributing to Wooter’s success.
“When we first start Wooter we focus on recreation sports, with a much wider range.” Max mentioned that Wooter also included fitness, yoga, experience kayak, dancing and most of the recreation activities at first. In August 2014, the team realized that covering a wide range of sports was not the way to go. Max added, “We have limited staff members and limited funds, and the competition was way bigger than focusing on one thing.”
The Wooter team realized that they needed to change something. As a result, they decided to narrow down their coverage and concentrated on sports. They dropped all other recreation activities such as dancing and kayaking to stay focused. The pivoted decision worked and soon attracted more followers as well as league partners.
“We did the math, and we have numerous league partners on board to get started for the Winter/Spring Seasons,” pointed out by David Kleyman, the COO of Wooter. After narrowing down the activities users may choose, Wooter became more specific on their goal, expanding their business in a hasty way.
It’s clearly that Wooter has more potentials now than before. Instead of holding monthly or biweekly events as in the past, they now start organizing events focusing on sports every week.
“The biggest difference is how much easier it became to complete projects since the goals are narrower,” said by Alex Aleksandrovski, the founder and CEO of Wooter, “We only have to take account of one category when we are a creating an addition to the website.”
The team holds a very positive attitude toward Wooter’s future after pivoting the company’s strategy. They also consider to “picking up” the activities they dropped during the transition period. “We want to monopoly the market, and do everything,” according to Max.
Alex also pointed out, “Our vision is to dominate recreational sports. When you think sports, you use Wooter. Kind of like shopping online and Amazon or Uber and taking a cab.”
