Does Your Sport Startup Find Itself In A Red Ocean Or A Blue Ocean?

Most of us dream of improving the sports industry or another individual’s sports experience. In many cases, this is because we experience(d) a need ourselves. Which means when we start turning this dream into a startup, we need to approach the creation of our business with a critical eye, making sur...

Internationalization Done Right: Why It’s Smart To Use A Soft Landing Program

A few years ago, Harvard Business Review performed an analysis which revealed that for most companies, it takes up to 10 years after moving into a new market to reach just a 1 percent return on investment.

The challenge is that there’s no handbook for expanding your business to a new region. Fin...

SportUp Meet 2020: The New Way of Networking!

INCLUDING AFTERMOVIE ⬇️

So many things to do, so many contacts to follow or so in need of new contacts, but so little time!

We asked ourselves: how can we help our SportsTech startup community?
What do they need and what have they missed the most during this Corona crisis that has been keep...

How To Build An International Network That Really Facilitates Your Expansion In A New Market

At some point in your sports tech startup journey, the idea of expanding your business to other countries will probably pop up.

You might want to expand because your home market is too small, your current market is saturated, other markets seem ‘more ready’ for your product, there are other marke...

How to expand your network at SportUp Meet with the right people?

Here are some suggestions to meet interesting profiles!

It will be provided by Conversation Starter, a tool to meet new people in a very efficient way. Just make a profile here, where you tell us about yourself (where do you work/your passion), what you need or who do you want to meet and...

How To Assess The Competitive Playing Field Of Your Startup: The 3 Main Areas To Research

The feeling you get after discovering an idea that could potentially innovate or revolutionize the sports industry, is amazing.

You immediately sense the possibilities of how your idea can improve people’s lives or impact companies’ efficiency. You might even envision how you create a living out o...

14 Networking Tips From A Sports Tech Startup Insider

As a follow-up to our previous blog post ‘Why every sport startup founder needs to be a part time networker’, sharing the 9 Types of people founders need to have in their network, we dug a little deeper and asked SportUp Program Manager Kristof De Mey to share his best networking advice.

Over th...

Why Every Sport Startup Founder Needs To Be a Part-Time Networker

Have you ever heard the saying: “Your network is your net worth”?

Ever since startup advisor Porter Gale coined this saying in 2013 by writing a book with this title, it’s been used countless times by startup mentors advising their ambitious mentees.

Every startup founder has to build a networ...

These 5 Factors Account The Most For Startup Success, According To Serial Tech Innovator Bill Gross

Whenever people discuss which factors are the most determining when it comes to startup success, opinions are widely divided.

Is it actually possible to predict if a business is going to be successful? We asked Sportup Innovation Manager Nico Delleman, who came up with some interesting research....

The 4 Laws Of Innovation That Make Or Break Your Sports Tech Innovation Process

Having an innovative idea that could impact or possibly turn around the industry you’re in is one thing, but it’s a whole other thing to successfully work through an innovation process to bring that idea to life.

Over the past 2 years of coaching a few dozen sports tech startups in our SportUp pr...

Get to know 5 new startups from SportUp Boost

What happened during the latest SportUp Boost?

5 startups successfully completed this 3rd season of SportUp Boost and again, we had very enriching sessions.

All the workshops were organized completely remote, by using MS Teams. The various theoretical topics were explained during the plenary cal...

Two Types Of Customers Sport Startups Absolutely Need To Convince First

How do innovators like you get the mass majority to adopt your innovation so you can grow your startup into a strong and sustainable business? Not an easy question to answer, but experience and research uncovered many indicators on what startups should -or not- do.

One of those indicators is found...

Eager To Expand Your Startup Internationally? Make Sure You Meet These 7 conditions.

For many startups Flanders is a great testing ground to further scale globally. With the presence of many international companies nearby and located at the heart of Europe, Belgium’s active and international community offers many opportunities to grow your business.

Belgium offers a quick route t...

Mistakes Founders Make: Falling Into The ‘One-Lead-User’ Trap

There aren’t many entrepreneurs out there who become entrepreneurs just by 'wanting' to be an entrepreneur. Let alone be successful.

Successful entrepreneurs mostly start off by dreaming: they find themselves asking questions like "What if...", which leads to ideas popping up. And most of them wil...

The one framework every sports tech startup needs to apply (besides the Business Model Canvas): imec’s Innovatrix model

Since its initial development in 2005, the Business Model Canvas (BMC) has spread throughout startup land and quickly became one of the most used business model frameworks.

Compiled of nine different building blocks, it describes a business’ or product's value proposition, infrastructure, custome...

The most overlooked (but important) opportunity for startups entering the sports app market

In the past decade, any moderate to highly ambitious athlete has definitely noticed the rise of the sports tracking apps. Entering the 2020s, the adaptation of those apps has moved from being embraced by the innovators and early adopters to the majority of people. But whereas the initial majority of...

The main reason why sport startups fail - and how to prevent yours from flopping

‘What if…?’ is probably one of the most important questions asked throughout human history. It sparked evolutions, revolutions and innovations that pushed us further than we could have imagined… and it still drives us forward today.

It leads us to pushing the barriers of our physical capabilities,...

9 mistakes startups need to avoid when joining a startup accelerator

Next to the +15 European sports tech accelerators that SportsTechX wrote about earlier last month, there are many, many more startup accelerators, in all forms and shapes. Whatever niche or sector you’re in (sports, health, media or others), you'll probably find an accelerator that caters to your ne...