Sporting chance pays off for Trinity graduates

START-UP NATION: RzerV:What started out as a college project has now become a New-York based start-up for TCD graduates Alex Mann and Tiernan Kennedy.

Along with their classmate Dermot Markey, the duo came up with the idea for a mobile app that would pair sports players with each other. It was aimed at finding partners for people looking to play their favourite sport – be it ping pong, squash, tennis or even a game of five-a-side.

“In the final year of our BESS course, we had to come up with a business plan and presentation,” Mann says.

“I had the idea for this but was worried the college might own the idea if I used it as part of my course. In the end, we had no choice though, as it was the only good idea we had.”

The company was the only foreign team accepted on to the GE/OMD summer incubator programme, a 10-week development programme organised by General Electric and global media group Omnicom’s OMD.

Reservations

“I saw a tweet last March about an amazing incubator in New York. I chanced my arm, copying and pasting bits from our business plan and applied. I got an email at 2am on the night of the Trinity Ball saying we’d been selected for the final.

“I’d never even told the other guys I’d applied, so I had to tell them then we might have to go to NYC for the summer.”

The company, originally called PearUp, evolved from a player-pairing app to a fully-fledged health and fitness app during the incubator programme.

“We thought building the pairing function would take ages but it only took two weeks, so we decided to build a reservations function. That took another two weeks. Then we built a payments system.”

The mobile app now allows people to book and pay for courts, fitness classes and personal training sessions on their phones.

“Members of the public can take out their phone, see what classes are available nearby and book them.”

PearUp eventually came second in the programme and the company decided to remain in the city, due to the sheer scale of the opportunities and potential customers.

“We were three Irish Micks surrounded by extraordinarily talented people from the likes of Stanford, MIT, Harvard etc. We placed second in the end, which was initially disappointing.,” Mann says. “But, in reality, what we gained from the incubator was just beyond our wildest expectations.”

Mann and Kennedy changed the name from PearUp to RzerV in October following poor feedback on the original title.

Hilarious

“It was originally called PearUp as we paired users together. The Americans didn’t like that we’d spelled pair as pear. They also didn’t like the term as they tend to say team up as opposed to pair up.

“We had spent ages coming up with the name and thought it was hilarious, so were disappointed that everyone thought it was terrible.”

The company uses the Stripe mobile payments system, founded by Limerick brothers John and Patrick Collison, to process the booking payments.

“We are currently based in the States, as the app wouldn’t work in Ireland in its current format.”

The business takes a cut out of every booking payment that is made using the app. “The user doesn’t pay to use the app, and the club doesn’t pay anything either. We bring the clubs money and thus take a cut.”

Mann says that while the health club gets less money from the customer than if the customer went directly to the club, they get extra bookings.

“We were originally going through a client list one by one and it was taking ages, so we decided it would be quicker to partner with larger chains/companies.

“By partnering with larger chains, the processing of payments is taken out of our hands. That works out fine as we don’t have to absorb the credit card costs from bookings made using the app. They will give us a percentage of money coming from bookings made through the app.”

Mann says he would like to expand the app out to other cities and maybe even Ireland. To his great surprise, the company won Best Mobile Phone App at the Digital Advertising Awards in Belfast this year.

“Our focus now is getting as many clubs as possible using the app,” he says.