June 18, 2025 • 29 mins
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For many of us, grassroots sports are where it all begins. Whether it’s football, cricket, or rugby, local clubs shape communities, teach life skills, and bring people together. But there’s a serious problem—these clubs are folding at an alarming rate.
This week on MarketPulse: Pros and Pioneers, we sit down with Alex Fitchett, co-founder of PitchIn, to uncover the financial struggles that grassroots sports clubs face—and what can be done to save them. From the hidden costs of running a youth football team to the complexities of fundraising, Alex shares insights from his own experience in cricket and football, as well as how technology is helping clubs raise money more efficiently.
🚨 If you think youth sports are affordable, think again. Clubs are struggling with rising costs, committee politics, and outdated fundraising models, leaving volunteers overwhelmed. Alex reveals how PitchIn is solving these problems—and why he built the platform in the first place.
🔑 What you’ll learn in this episode:
- Why grassroots sports clubs are shutting down
- The hidden costs that most parents don’t see
- How tech can save local teams from financial collapse
- The challenges of marketing to volunteers and committee-run organisations
- How to successfully fundraise without constantly begging for donations
⚽ If you’re involved in grassroots sports—or just care about the future of local clubs—this is an episode you can’t afford to miss.
🎥 Watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/@marketpulsepodcast?sub_confirmation=1
Show Links:
Find out more about PitchIn: https://www.pitchinplatform.com
Connect with Alex Fitchett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexfitchett/
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Find Paul on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/paul-banks007
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Paul (00:00):
Good afternoon and welcome to this week's episode of
(00:02):
MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers.
As we've mentioned, for seasontwo we are delving deep into the
stories of our guests,understanding what makes them
tick and how that transitionsinto their why which quite a lot
of the time is why we start thebusiness or we're involved in
the businesses that we work in.
So this week I am privileged towelcome Alex Fitchett to the
(00:25):
show.
Alex, hi.
Alex (00:26):
Hi thanks for having me.
Paul (00:27):
Good to have you along.
Good to have you along.
Alex is co founder of PitchinPlatform.
He's also a Director of Deliveryat Bamboo Rose he's a lifelong
sports enthusiast and Alex'sjourney began in grassroots
sports, where he saw first handthe struggles of community clubs
to sustain themselvesfinancially.
And that inspired him to createPitchIn, which is a platform
that simplifies fundraising andsupporter engagement for
(00:50):
grassroots organisations.
He's got a background in dataanalytics and BI, and Alex
merges technology with communitydriven solutions.
Ensuring that local sports clubscan thrive with less
administration burden and morefocus on the game.
I have to say, Alex when we wereconnected together, this
couldn't have come at a bettertime for me, in terms of the
(01:11):
journey that I'm going throughwith my son, as we were talking
before the episode started.
Because my son is going throughthe grassroots system.
And we've seen firsthand some ofthe challenges that you created
PitchIn to solve.
I think it's a fantasticinitiative.
Alex (01:25):
Thanks.
Paul (01:25):
First up, could you just you mentioned that you're
involved in grassroots at ayoung age.
So do you want to walk usthrough what you were involved
in and how that may be inspiredyou to start PitchIn what the
things that you saw?
Sure.
Alex (01:37):
Yeah, sure.
Yeah like I said, from a veryyoung age, so from the age of
about four, I started playingcricket through my grandparents,
and my grandad's massively intocricket, he's an outstanding
cricketer himself and my greatgrandad was, and it's a family
thing, comes all the waythrough.
And so I didn't really have muchchoice, to be honest, at the
start.
So from the age of four, I wasin the garden, he was throwing
cricket balls at my shinstelling me to use the bat rather
than learning about how much ithurt, that kind of old school
(01:59):
way of coaching someone how toplay.
And then I was always intofootball as well, so it was
football during the winter,cricket during the summer.
It's quite traditional in thatsense.
And we're all massive DerbyCounty fans as well, so that was
something that kind of runthrough as well.
And then, yeah, I just wentthrough the ranks of grassroots
sport, mostly cricket, startedplaying kind of quick cricket
with the old blue plastic batsthat people might remember then
(02:20):
under 11s hardball, then you,you work your way up basically
into the, eventually into theadult teams, whether you're like
12, 13, that kind of thing, thenplaying 13 cricket and then
before you know it, you'replaying first team cricket with
fully blown adults that are, 30and twice the size of you, and
it probably isn't as I'm not ashard as playing rugby with
people that size, but the impactis probably the same.
(02:42):
And yeah, when I was growing upthe clubs themselves were a
community focal point for us.
It wasn't the game, it was justthe game.
It was there, we were thereevery day, we were there every
night, we were there over theweekend, we were there during
the winter, the summer, and yougrow up.
Kind of with these peoplesurrounding you.
So like the tea lady back in theday or the scorer, the umpires,
the coaches.
(03:02):
So it wasn't just reliance onlike my granddad being there,
for example.
It was like, you grow up withthese people and you still know
them today.
They're very close to you.
So I know how vital it was thatthese kind of clubs stay around.
It's not just transactional.
And then as I progressed throughyou start taking on more and
more responsibility atgrassroots clubs.
So as you become an adult, asyou become, have a career that
(03:23):
people can lean on.
So if you've got a painter anddecorator, suddenly they become
the guy that everyone expects todo all the painting around the
club.
Mine was obviously, and we'lltalk about the tech career on
the side, but mine was sotechnology focused I took on a
lot of the IT stuff and theneventually fundraising because
no one else picked it up.
And that kind of led to theremust be better ways of doing
(03:45):
this because this is ridiculousand it's taken me ages.
And I could see why the last guydidn't want to do it anymore.
That's basically where I got to.
Paul (03:52):
Yeah, you get to the point where you always feel like
you've got your hand out topeople.
Alex (03:55):
Yeah, you're always asking for
Paul (03:56):
but,
Alex (03:57):
Yeah, exactly.
You're asking the same peoplefor the same amount of money.
You might as well just ask themat the start of the year for an
extra 200 quid or somethingrather than engaging with
anything else.
And it's so manual and so heavyhanded that it's, as soon as
someone drops it and leaves,someone picking it up again,
it's almost an impossible task.
So yeah that's how PitchInstarted which I can talk about.
And then in terms of mybackground in tech, it's.
(04:20):
Traditionally, I was neverreally into technology, really
growing up, like I said, I wasquite sporty, I was actually
really into history, I went anddid a history degree, I moved to
Budapest to do a history degree,and study Eastern European
economics, and it was justtechnology wasn't on my radar,
really And then when I cameback, I was working at, as we
were discussing before, I wasworking at Asda on the shop
floor, and I was sackingshelves, and I thought there's
(04:40):
got to be something more outthere for me to do with my time,
something interesting that I canengage my brain in.
And I applied for jobs atvarious startups, really, not
really understanding what itreally was.
Landed really on my feet at astartup called Solutions for
Retail Brands in Nottingham.
Working with working on supplychain software for Walmart,
Asda, and things like that.
(05:01):
Loved it, and because it was astartup, I got to try loads of
different things because Iwasn't really sure what I wanted
to do anyway.
So I got to try a bit ofmarketing, dabble in a bit of
finance, dabble in a bit ofproject management, a bit of
account management travel theworld as well, and really landed
on my feet.
And then.
Worked out where my strengthslie and it was really a
combination of projects andengagement management and data,
(05:24):
really.
And that's where I pursued themost over the following 10
years.
I met Matt along the way, he wasa co founder of Pitchin Platform
as well.
He also worked there, that's howwe met.
Paul (05:34):
That kind of serendipity in the meeting.
And do you know what, I think,had you not had that moment, and
I laugh at it because it mirrorsmy own background to a certain
extent, although I didn't getdirectly involved in the
technology side, that's theindustry I ended up in.
Had you not made that leap, thenyou wouldn't have been in the
position to be able to startPitchIn and do something
(05:55):
yourself.
And I think that's where a lotof founders go, struggle a
little bit because they'reeither product people who are
very good at the product, butnot so much at the business
operationalization or they'rebusiness people, but have no
idea how to do the the technicalside of things and the
programming side of things andthe design side.
(06:17):
So it sounds like between youand your core fan, you've ticked
both the boxes each, right?
Like you've,
Alex (06:23):
we were so lucky really that so I see these, Sites all
the time that try and match thefounders and if you're non
technical trying to match withthe technical and vice versa and
I get it because you do needboth.
Like I think trying to, if I wastrying to build it by myself and
I was having to outsource thecoding and the tech, it would
one, cost me a lot more money.
It would two, be very difficultfor me to translate a lot of my
ideas across, I think.
So I got really lucky in thefact that Matt is a grassroots
(06:46):
sports enthusiast as well, likehe's done it himself, he knows
the problem, he's run clubshimself and also interestingly,
not cricket, he's playedcricket, but he's run like
basketball clubs and has just aslightly different experience to
bring to it as well.
But because he understands theproblem and he's that passionate
about it, being able to joinforces with someone that's a
front end, back end developer.
(07:07):
And then I do the rest is Idon't know how I would have done
it if I was able to try and findsomeone to do it or pay someone
to do it.
I think my enthusiasm would havenot initially been as much as
well if I didn't have a friendthat was also my co founder.
If I was like, it'stransactional if I was trying to
find someone and kind of searchfor them like it was a job
almost.
So yeah, we got really luckyboth in, Kind of purpose and
(07:29):
skill set.
People do say you you got tothink about founder fit.
And I do think we smashed it onthat front, to be honest.
By fluke really, there is justluck.
It's not any formula that youcan copy, but we did smash it
really.
Paul (07:42):
I wonder though so there must've been a point in time
where you committed to buildPitchin and get it done.
What was the turning point foryou where you just thought, you
know what, I have to get thisstarted and it can't wait any
longer.
Alex (07:55):
Yeah.
There's two key moments reallyfor that.
One is so when we first startedbuilding Pitchin, it wasn't
intentionally a business.
It wasn't a, There was no ideaof a co founder, really.
It was like, I was struggling todo the 100 Club myself at my
cricket club, and struggling todo sponsorship, and basically
got in touch with Matt, who Iplayed cricket with, and I know,
really well, and I was like, canyou must be able to build me
(08:17):
something that makes my lifeeasier.
And that was what it was.
He, we built this really rubbishI've got screenshots of it now,
just in case they're quiteinterested to to look back on
and it made my life a loteasier, allow people to buy a
hundred club numbers and gothrough the transaction and only
buy numbers that are availableand save me hours.
But as we were advertising itfor my club, just on social
media saying, does anyone wantto buy a Hundred Club number?
(08:39):
I was getting messages fromother clubs saying, what's pitch
in?
We've not seen it.
It looks really helpful.
Can you put me in touch withthem?
And only really after a whiledid we think, oh, maybe it is
useful to other people.
There is actually a pain herethat isn't being solved
elsewhere.
And so I gave it to those clubsfor free.
Like I just again, I was I don'tknow if I want it to be a
business, like it's not reallyWhat I saw happening so the
(09:01):
games were free, and they had itfor free until two months ago,
to be honest, those blobs.
They were like the pilots, wehad 10 pilots that I still lean
on today to, every time werelease a new feature, I go to
them first and I give them firstchance of feeding back and using
it.
And then the second key pointwas When we started taking it a
bit more seriously, I thenstarted talking to other people
(09:24):
about it a lot more, includingJames Butcher, who's now in the
business, is chair of Pitchin.
And at that point we were like,okay, we're going to actually
start taking this seriously as abusiness.
We're going to formalize a lotof the stuff that we were
already talking about, bothlegally but also financially,
all this kind of stuff.
And we basically stoppedonboarding clubs and said since
(09:44):
we're doing that, let's stoponboarding.
I'm going to give Matt a fewmonths to basically build a
platform that is self service.
It's scalable.
Clubs can go on and do whateverthey need.
It isn't reliant on me copypasting stuff like the other
ones were.
And that was the key turningpoint to where we basically
decided.
We're going to pursue it as anactual kind of venture,
(10:05):
essentially.
And then we launched in Januaryto a waitlist, waitlist over the
next four months.
Launched in January to nearly100 clubs.
And that's really when itstarted taking off as a, yeah,
this is what we want to do.
This is actually helping, andit's a really purpose driven
business.
Paul (10:21):
Yeah, building a waitlist.
Daniel Priestley would be soproud.
I can tell.
Alex (10:25):
Yeah,
Paul (10:26):
so for those, Who are watching along at home, who
don't have kids involved ingrassroots football or
grassroots cricket or whateversport.
And I like, first of all, I haveto say, I like the idea that
you've built the platform to besport agnostic.
It's not for cricket kids.
It's not for football kids.
It's for sports clubs, whateverthat might be.
Alex (10:47):
Yeah.
It's interesting you say thatbecause we've got a lot of rugby
clubs, football clubs, smallcharities, scouts, we've got sea
cadets on there.
So anyone that relies onvolunteers to do fundraising,
basically.
But it does make messagingdifficult, which we'll probably
move on to when it comes tomarketing.
Paul (11:02):
So my son started in a club in June, July, and I just
wanna bring it to life to peoplea little bit as to how much
money actually these clubs need.
And we signed him up to, to playregularly with a league team.
And you'd pay subs of about 25 amonth to cover referee fees,
(11:22):
league games training time, allthat sort of thing.
It's not for profit, it justcovers the costs of running the
team.
And so you've got about sevenkids in a five a side team at
that age, paying that 25 amonth.
But then they did a fundraisingdrive.
And I was I'm I've got quite abig network, I'm quite a big fan
of helping not for profits.
(11:42):
I was like how much do weactually need?
You're asking us to raise money,but what's the target?
And they were like, as much aswe can get.
I was like because what are wegoing to buy with this?
Cause I just thought, he needs afootball shirt, which he's
already got.
He needs shorts, which he'salready got.
He needs a pair of socks, whichwe've bought him.
What else does he need?
We're like we need like atraining top for when it starts
to get chilly, so you have along sleeve training top on
okay, then you need a waterproofjacket for when it's raining and
(12:05):
then you need tracksuit bottomsfor the winter, and probably
some waterproof trousers, youcan buy those yourself okay, and
then we need a winter coat,because it's gonna get really
cold and you need something toget to the Games Inn before you
strip off and you starttraining, okay?
And we need probably some hatsand maybe some like neck gaiters
or something like that.
And I was like this is, and thisis all on top of buying football
(12:27):
boots, shin pads, goalkeepergloves, goalkeeper I'm like, I
had no idea it was going to bethis expensive per child.
And there's hundreds of childrenjust in that one club.
There's probably four or fivehundred registered youth at that
club.
And there are hundreds of theseclubs across the UK, right?
Alex (12:47):
yeah, and to be honest, football is expensive, but it's
probably one of the cheapersports as well, because if you
think whatever you spend onfootball, think about how much
you spend on cricket, like acricket bat nowadays is
astronomical for a kid that'sgrowing as well, but they're
going to need one, supposedlyevery year, every two years.
You're paying hundreds of poundsfor just the bat, never mind the
pads, the gloves, the kit.
(13:09):
Then also the club kit that youwere speaking about, which is
similar for cricket.
And then for clubs, to behonest, and that's for families
and we, the PitchIn, the waywe've built it for families does
allow us that they can spreadcosts of subscriptions and all
sorts over months because ofthat reason.
Having also grown up thinking,subscriptions are a lot, not
being able to buy new kit tryingto help families.
(13:29):
Play cricket or play whateversport they're trying to do.
But for clubs themselves forcricket as well, and this is
where it overlaps a little bitwith rugby because they tend to
have a bigger home than footballdo, like the facilities
management in cricket costs tensof thousands a year for clubs,
whether it's nets or, and if youdon't have nets then juniors
won't join and any club will diethat way, or or it's like
(13:50):
lawnmowers or, cause themaintenance of the pitch is to a
standard that football isn't.
Paul (13:57):
Yep.
Alex (13:58):
Sorry.
is something that, yeah, noother sport really has to
contend with, is that there's 40hours a week of a groundsman
putting effort into the pitch,using five different lawnmowers
for different heights, and thenthey outfield, and then the
boundary rope, if you've got arope, costs loads of money.
Or if you're like we've spent30, 40 grand on a massive net on
(14:18):
one side of the ground becausethey've built new houses on the
other side.
And it's apparently ourresponsibility to make sure they
don't get hit by a ball eventhough the ground was there for
120 years before they werebuilt.
Like that kind of thing.
It just becomes, and you can seewhy clubs fold, because it just
becomes ridiculous when you'regetting like 50, 000 to run a
three or four person cricketclub.
let alone, yeah, rugby,football, it just gets crazy.
Paul (14:43):
This is why I like talking to owners of purpose driven
businesses, right?
So I, what I hear from you isthat PitchIn, yes, it is built
now as a business rather than anot for profit, but the purpose
of the business is not to makeprofit, it's to drive.
It's to survive, right?
It's
Alex (15:00):
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Paul (15:02):
so it can be a business for good for all of those small
clubs.
Alex (15:08):
Yeah, exactly.
We were never trying to makemoney out of clubs necessarily.
We take like a small transactionfee to keep the infrastructure
going.
But really our business modelhas always been reduce the
amount for clubs and I'll getmoney elsewhere.
Like whether it's utilizing theaudience for some advertising
or, and even then I don't wantto put Google ads or affiliate
marketing necessarily.
(15:28):
It's more.
I want to go to specific brandsand say you are a cricket brand,
you could offer discounts tothis massive audience of kids
and parents.
Why not just sponsor the sites,the network that we've got?
And that's where we want to getto, because you're right, we are
purpose driven.
We're not there to make moneyout of clubs, like a lot of the
other team management apps canbe.
Paul (15:50):
Did you feel it was Something that you guys had to
build.
I don't know, it was, you werestruggling with the management
side of things yourself.
But like, why do you think it isthat you decided that you needed
to do something about it?
Why specifically you?
Cause everybody else just mournsabout it and gets on with it.
So what's the difference betweenthe next person and you?
Alex (16:10):
Yeah, I guess it was fortuitous that the stars
aligned with me and Matt and itwould work well.
I think the Having worked at astartup in the past.
I knew that you can just buildthings, like it's not, it's not
impossible, it's not beyond therealms of possibility to use
technology to your advantage,that I think a lot of people see
as a blocker.
And I think I've, personallyI've always had a bit more of a
(16:30):
drive to build things, I'm a bitmore of a builder, I like
solutionizing things, like it isa problem sometimes when people
don't want solutions, I'm tryingto like think of solutions.
And I've got loads of ideasabout how I can help people out
like day to day, using, whetherit's technology, whether it's
services, whatever it is.
And so my mind naturally justwent to, why am I doing all this
manual work?
(16:51):
When I'm emailing 200 peopleabout 100 club numbers, and then
4 are sending back, can I havenumber 16?
And then I'm like only one ofyou can have it.
And then I go to the treasurerand see if who's paid.
And one of them's paid 250 quid,because he also includes annual
subs.
I'm like, This is ridiculous.
There must technology can solveall of this problem.
And then I go searching for asolution and there isn't one,
and I'm like yeah, I'm just notafraid to build it myself then,
(17:12):
or get someone else that I knowclose to help me build it.
I think it's just that.
That, and also that I'm anaturally lazy person when it
comes to that kind of thing.
When it comes to admin, I'malways like, there must be.
an easier solution to this.
There's no reason why this isgoing to take me hours a week to
run, when all someone's doing isbuying a number.
That's all they're doing.
People buy lottery tickets.
It doesn't take the nationallottery hours to let people buy
(17:33):
lottery tickets.
Yeah, I don't know if thatanswers the question, but yeah,
that's how I came about it,really.
Paul (17:37):
I think that's interesting though, because there's
something about the skillset mixthere that just made it where
other people would see anobstacle there, you saw an
opportunity.
And I think that's the basis ofa lot of businesses, whether
they admit it or not, likethat's the basis for a lot of
businesses.
It's about being in the rightplace at the right time with the
right skillset and the right
Alex (17:56):
think so, yeah.
There's a lot more lookinvolved, I think, than people
give it credit for.
I think, obviously, this is hardwork, there's skills you have to
be the right person, but Ithink, The problem existing and
me taking over fundraising at myclub happened at the perfect
time for me and the perfect timefor Matt and everything aligned.
And I have enough kind ofcontact in, it's almost like
(18:17):
I've spent a lifetime buildingup contacts in cricket to help
me build at least the initialversions and get the business
off the ground.
In a way that if I was justrandomly, I'm going to, I'm
going to start something, abusiness, and then I'm just,
then I'm going to think about.
Yeah.
What problem is it solving?
How am I going to get contacts?
All this kind of stuff.
Just, I just didn't come at itlike that.
It was just lucky that I didn'tneed to worry about that.
There is a pain because it's mypain.
(18:39):
I've got the contacts becauseI've spent, 30 years playing
cricket across six differentcounties.
And it just felt, yeah, like I'dspent my life building up to
that, building that which, mightsound stupid, but it just,
that's what it just felt likefor me.
Paul (18:54):
Yep.
So then, you mentioned earlieron that you found that there was
a struggle around messaging whenthere was multiple fundraisers
in a small organisation.
Do you want to walk us throughthat?
Alex (19:05):
Yeah.
So one challenge, we have hadsome challenges with marketing,
I think, fundamentally comesdown to probably the fact that
we're not marketing,understanding whether we're B2B
or B2C, and we're actuallyneither, we're like B2Volunteer,
and marketing to volunteers, arange of sports, a range of
ages, has been really tough fora few different reasons, really.
(19:26):
Educating people that have donethe same thing for decades, that
there is actually a potentialsolution out there.
But people that aren'tnecessarily looking for the
solution because they're quitetechnophobic, like they're not
actively looking for thetechnical solution.
So like getting them on board,making them understand that
it's, it makes their life easierand that we're different to the
other management apps that comeat them and say we can manage
(19:46):
your fixtures and availabilityand that we're only solely
focused on raising the money andactually hitting the the
revenue.
The other thing that has alwaysbeen a problem has been that
unlike business, so if you'retargeting businesses, you find a
decision maker, either they havebudget or their boss has budget,
you can get a meeting and youget a decision because you know
who's making the decision.
These places they wait forcommittee meetings and committee
(20:08):
meetings could be anywherebetween, next month and three
months time.
They, everything's done bycommittee.
Nothing, there's no,everything's there's no
everything's centralized aroundthe volunteers and everyone
making a democratic decision.
It's very rare.
And we do get some clubs likethis, I mean my club was like
this, which is why I built itreally where they basically give
the reins to someone to go andfundraise however they see fit.
(20:28):
A lot of the time it's now we'regoing to get committed and we're
going to decide.
And yeah, the messagingspecifically was difficult for a
couple of reasons.
One is that, like you said,we're quite agnostic, which
makes us, it sounds great, butwhen you're trying to build
something at least vertically atthe start, so that you can Built
on a big product led, tooagnostic.
Like I said, it can help anyonethat uses volunteers for
(20:48):
fundraising.
So we do get Sea Cadets and wedo get scouts and we do get all
these things where I'm like, wecan help you and we do help you.
But remember, it's built firstand foremost for grassroots
sport and specifically cricket,rugby and bubble, to be honest,
initially.
And that's difficult from amessaging point of view on the
website and marketing.
It's also difficult from a.
Product point of view.
(21:09):
So like Matt's very good atkeeping us in check for is that
really our kind of current focuswhen I'm coming back with like
feedback from sea cadets?
Is that really going to help thehundreds of creative clubs that
we're getting on board?
And the other one as well,actually finding the contacts
is, Harder, I think, causehaving worked in kind of
(21:31):
businesses in the past where youcan go on LinkedIn and search
for a role, no one puts theirvolunteer roles on their
LinkedIn.
Not, I can't search for who'sthe fundraising manager at
cricket clubs because peoplehave put it on the LinkedIn.
Some people do, but most peopledon't.
I don't have it on mine, forexample.
So I'm at fault as well.
So like finding those contactsis so hard to then market to.
Luckily for like cricket, we'vegot playcricket, which is like a
(21:53):
free site that every club prettymuch uses.
They've got 6, 000 clubs onthere, but that doesn't mean
they keep it up to date.
It doesn't mean that they havethe people on there with their
email addresses and all thatkind of stuff.
And it's very manual.
I have to go on and paste theemail address and I'm not going
to do that for 6, 000 clubs.
So yeah, there's quite a fewkind of stumbling blocks that we
didn't really realize at thestart that we learned as we went
around marketing generally andmessaging and our messaging on
(22:14):
our website changes quiteregularly based on feedback.
Got it.
Paul (22:17):
It's certainly not a filter on LinkedIn, is it?
Let's be honest.
There are some, there's somegreat filters on LinkedIn.
There's some terrible ones, butvolunteer work is, and as you
said, even if you are doing it,like I've got, so I used to be a
volunteer police officer andI've got that proudly displayed
on mine cause it does add adimension to my experience.
But were I running a footballclub?
First of all, it's not for me.
(22:39):
But No, I probably wouldn't putit on there.
And I do know people that areinvolved in that.
who don't have it on their
Alex (22:45):
especially the roles as well, because I'm not searching
for anyone that's a volunteer ata Cricket Club either.
I'm searching for someone that'seither a treasurer or a
fundraiser, or there's no pointin me getting in touch with the
second team captain a lot,because I am reliant on them
passing it over to someonethat's more relevant, and
everything gets lost intranslation at that point.
Paul (23:04):
It on your behalf, yeah,
Alex (23:06):
And selling.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So I, so we do a lot of and tomitigate that, I do a lot of
phone calls and demos.
I go on site to clubs a lot.
So I do a lot of miles drivingto clubs and joining committee
meetings and trying to getfirstly on board them clearly.
But secondly, like I do a lot ofnote taking on what words are
actually using as well, whichhelps the messaging, which we
(23:27):
were talking about.
So like the current message onthe website is word by word.
Basically got, when I went to afew clubs and said you describe
to me what PitchIn Platform doesfor you.
And then I just regurgitatedtheir words, cause I'm like,
that's What every other club isgoing to be looking for then.
Because originally our wordswere, it sounds great, but raise
more funds, spend less timedoing it, was our original
headline.
And that's lovely, I think itrolls off the tongue great, but
(23:48):
Dave at the Cricket Club isn'tgoing to read it and go, that
answers my question that theyautomate 100 clubs.
It just doesn't.
Whereas when I asked him what itdoes, he's it takes out the
grunt work of the admin of this.
And I'm like, it doesn't soundas exciting, but it clearly
spells out what we do.
So I do a lot of that,basically.
It's backwards and forwards withclubs and talking to them a lot
until we've really nailed it.
Paul (24:06):
I think that's fantastic cause you've applied the
community spirit of grassrootssport to how you go about your
business development and yourmarketing.
I think that's I actually, I'vespoke for a long time about the
importance of marketing, Teammembers in SaaS businesses being
at least either invited along tosales calls or watching
(24:27):
playbacks of sales calls for thesame reason.
Like you need to know how theprospects and the leads and the
customers themselves talk aboutyour product.
Because you can have all the
Alex (24:39):
Down to the words Yeah, like what words are they
actually using when theydescribe you?
You can't even rely on Googlesearch for it, like what's, what
they're searching, like what arethey actually verbally saying?
Or writing, like in an email,what are they actually using as
the words?
Cause no one searches Google forgrunt work, takes the grunt work
out, but that's just how theytalk, like it, yeah.
And I think, One thing that'salways motivated us to do that
(25:03):
kind of thing, and for me to geton so many calls, because I'm
not necessarily in the previousbusinesses, I'll actively avoid
a lot of meetings and stuff,because I'm not a big meeting
person, but these ones aredifferent, because these are
volunteers, and if they can giveup their time to grab a club,
I'm sure I can give up 15minutes of my time to show them
a platform that's going to helpthem and help onboard them as
well.
I do a lot more hand holding ofIf we were truly trying to just
(25:26):
make it a product led businessfrom the beginning, Purely cause
it, Yeah, selfishly, it makes usfeel good as well.
When we see a new club on there,they raise money just make us
feel good,
Paul (25:33):
alex, I've really enjoyed the conversation this morning.
When James first introduced us,I wasn't quite sure where the
conversation was going to go,but we have so many shared
experiences and ideas.
I've really enjoyed our chattogether.
If the audience are listeningalong at home, they want to find
out more about PitchIn, or theywant to chat with you, maybe
(25:54):
they know somebody who's theright person they can introduce
you to, how can they get intouch?
Alex (25:58):
So we've got a website, PitchInplatform.
com is the website.
You can get in touch with me viathere.
You can find me atalexatPitchInplatform.
com, which is quite nice andsimple.
You can find me on LinkedIn.
There's not many Alex Fitchitson LinkedIn as well.
It's quite nice to have a uniquename in that sense.
And yeah, you can contact me inany way.
I think my mobile number's alsoon the website if they want to
WhatsApp me as well.
(26:19):
But that's the level I'm at theminute where I'm more than happy
for clubs to ring me, WhatsAppme, email me, LinkedIn message
me, whatever, and answer anyquestions they've got really.
Yeah.
Paul (26:29):
Thank you very much for your time today, Alex.
It's been a genuine pleasure.
Alex (26:32):
No, thank you.
Thanks for having me on.
Been great.
Paul (26:35):
And thank you for watching along at home or listening along
if you're listening on thepodcast.
Please do, if you've enjoyed thestart of season two, we've got
lots of plans for somefascinating guests across the
next year or so, please doreview the podcast and leave us
some stars, leave us somecomments back.
It means the world to us whenyou do but thank you very much
for taking your time to, tolisten to our episodes also.
(26:57):
podcast, that's why we do it.
Thank you very much and I'll seeyou again next week.
Bye bye.
Good afternoon and welcome to this week's episode of
(00:02):
MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers.
As we've mentioned, for seasontwo we are delving deep into the
stories of our guests,understanding what makes them
tick and how that transitionsinto their why which quite a lot
of the time is why we start thebusiness or we're involved in
the businesses that we work in.
So this week I am privileged towelcome Alex Fitchett to the
(00:25):
show.
Alex, hi.
Alex (00:26):
Hi thanks for having me.
Paul (00:27):
Good to have you along.
Good to have you along.
Alex is co founder of PitchinPlatform.
He's also a Director of Deliveryat Bamboo Rose he's a lifelong
sports enthusiast and Alex'sjourney began in grassroots
sports, where he saw first handthe struggles of community clubs
to sustain themselvesfinancially.
And that inspired him to createPitchIn, which is a platform
that simplifies fundraising andsupporter engagement for
(00:50):
grassroots organisations.
He's got a background in dataanalytics and BI, and Alex
merges technology with communitydriven solutions.
Ensuring that local sports clubscan thrive with less
administration burden and morefocus on the game.
I have to say, Alex when we wereconnected together, this
couldn't have come at a bettertime for me, in terms of the
(01:11):
journey that I'm going throughwith my son, as we were talking
before the episode started.
Because my son is going throughthe grassroots system.
And we've seen firsthand some ofthe challenges that you created
PitchIn to solve.
I think it's a fantasticinitiative.
Alex (01:25):
Thanks.
Paul (01:25):
First up, could you just you mentioned that you're
involved in grassroots at ayoung age.
So do you want to walk usthrough what you were involved
in and how that may be inspiredyou to start PitchIn what the
things that you saw?
Sure.
Alex (01:37):
Yeah, sure.
Yeah like I said, from a veryyoung age, so from the age of
about four, I started playingcricket through my grandparents,
and my grandad's massively intocricket, he's an outstanding
cricketer himself and my greatgrandad was, and it's a family
thing, comes all the waythrough.
And so I didn't really have muchchoice, to be honest, at the
start.
So from the age of four, I wasin the garden, he was throwing
cricket balls at my shinstelling me to use the bat rather
than learning about how much ithurt, that kind of old school
(01:59):
way of coaching someone how toplay.
And then I was always intofootball as well, so it was
football during the winter,cricket during the summer.
It's quite traditional in thatsense.
And we're all massive DerbyCounty fans as well, so that was
something that kind of runthrough as well.
And then, yeah, I just wentthrough the ranks of grassroots
sport, mostly cricket, startedplaying kind of quick cricket
with the old blue plastic batsthat people might remember then
(02:20):
under 11s hardball, then you,you work your way up basically
into the, eventually into theadult teams, whether you're like
12, 13, that kind of thing, thenplaying 13 cricket and then
before you know it, you'replaying first team cricket with
fully blown adults that are, 30and twice the size of you, and
it probably isn't as I'm not ashard as playing rugby with
people that size, but the impactis probably the same.
(02:42):
And yeah, when I was growing upthe clubs themselves were a
community focal point for us.
It wasn't the game, it was justthe game.
It was there, we were thereevery day, we were there every
night, we were there over theweekend, we were there during
the winter, the summer, and yougrow up.
Kind of with these peoplesurrounding you.
So like the tea lady back in theday or the scorer, the umpires,
the coaches.
(03:02):
So it wasn't just reliance onlike my granddad being there,
for example.
It was like, you grow up withthese people and you still know
them today.
They're very close to you.
So I know how vital it was thatthese kind of clubs stay around.
It's not just transactional.
And then as I progressed throughyou start taking on more and
more responsibility atgrassroots clubs.
So as you become an adult, asyou become, have a career that
(03:23):
people can lean on.
So if you've got a painter anddecorator, suddenly they become
the guy that everyone expects todo all the painting around the
club.
Mine was obviously, and we'lltalk about the tech career on
the side, but mine was sotechnology focused I took on a
lot of the IT stuff and theneventually fundraising because
no one else picked it up.
And that kind of led to theremust be better ways of doing
(03:45):
this because this is ridiculousand it's taken me ages.
And I could see why the last guydidn't want to do it anymore.
That's basically where I got to.
Paul (03:52):
Yeah, you get to the point where you always feel like
you've got your hand out topeople.
Alex (03:55):
Yeah, you're always asking for
Paul (03:56):
but,
Alex (03:57):
Yeah, exactly.
You're asking the same peoplefor the same amount of money.
You might as well just ask themat the start of the year for an
extra 200 quid or somethingrather than engaging with
anything else.
And it's so manual and so heavyhanded that it's, as soon as
someone drops it and leaves,someone picking it up again,
it's almost an impossible task.
So yeah that's how PitchInstarted which I can talk about.
And then in terms of mybackground in tech, it's.
(04:20):
Traditionally, I was neverreally into technology, really
growing up, like I said, I wasquite sporty, I was actually
really into history, I went anddid a history degree, I moved to
Budapest to do a history degree,and study Eastern European
economics, and it was justtechnology wasn't on my radar,
really And then when I cameback, I was working at, as we
were discussing before, I wasworking at Asda on the shop
floor, and I was sackingshelves, and I thought there's
(04:40):
got to be something more outthere for me to do with my time,
something interesting that I canengage my brain in.
And I applied for jobs atvarious startups, really, not
really understanding what itreally was.
Landed really on my feet at astartup called Solutions for
Retail Brands in Nottingham.
Working with working on supplychain software for Walmart,
Asda, and things like that.
(05:01):
Loved it, and because it was astartup, I got to try loads of
different things because Iwasn't really sure what I wanted
to do anyway.
So I got to try a bit ofmarketing, dabble in a bit of
finance, dabble in a bit ofproject management, a bit of
account management travel theworld as well, and really landed
on my feet.
And then.
Worked out where my strengthslie and it was really a
combination of projects andengagement management and data,
(05:24):
really.
And that's where I pursued themost over the following 10
years.
I met Matt along the way, he wasa co founder of Pitchin Platform
as well.
He also worked there, that's howwe met.
Paul (05:34):
That kind of serendipity in the meeting.
And do you know what, I think,had you not had that moment, and
I laugh at it because it mirrorsmy own background to a certain
extent, although I didn't getdirectly involved in the
technology side, that's theindustry I ended up in.
Had you not made that leap, thenyou wouldn't have been in the
position to be able to startPitchIn and do something
(05:55):
yourself.
And I think that's where a lotof founders go, struggle a
little bit because they'reeither product people who are
very good at the product, butnot so much at the business
operationalization or they'rebusiness people, but have no
idea how to do the the technicalside of things and the
programming side of things andthe design side.
(06:17):
So it sounds like between youand your core fan, you've ticked
both the boxes each, right?
Like you've,
Alex (06:23):
we were so lucky really that so I see these, Sites all
the time that try and match thefounders and if you're non
technical trying to match withthe technical and vice versa and
I get it because you do needboth.
Like I think trying to, if I wastrying to build it by myself and
I was having to outsource thecoding and the tech, it would
one, cost me a lot more money.
It would two, be very difficultfor me to translate a lot of my
ideas across, I think.
So I got really lucky in thefact that Matt is a grassroots
(06:46):
sports enthusiast as well, likehe's done it himself, he knows
the problem, he's run clubshimself and also interestingly,
not cricket, he's playedcricket, but he's run like
basketball clubs and has just aslightly different experience to
bring to it as well.
But because he understands theproblem and he's that passionate
about it, being able to joinforces with someone that's a
front end, back end developer.
(07:07):
And then I do the rest is Idon't know how I would have done
it if I was able to try and findsomeone to do it or pay someone
to do it.
I think my enthusiasm would havenot initially been as much as
well if I didn't have a friendthat was also my co founder.
If I was like, it'stransactional if I was trying to
find someone and kind of searchfor them like it was a job
almost.
So yeah, we got really luckyboth in, Kind of purpose and
(07:29):
skill set.
People do say you you got tothink about founder fit.
And I do think we smashed it onthat front, to be honest.
By fluke really, there is justluck.
It's not any formula that youcan copy, but we did smash it
really.
Paul (07:42):
I wonder though so there must've been a point in time
where you committed to buildPitchin and get it done.
What was the turning point foryou where you just thought, you
know what, I have to get thisstarted and it can't wait any
longer.
Alex (07:55):
Yeah.
There's two key moments reallyfor that.
One is so when we first startedbuilding Pitchin, it wasn't
intentionally a business.
It wasn't a, There was no ideaof a co founder, really.
It was like, I was struggling todo the 100 Club myself at my
cricket club, and struggling todo sponsorship, and basically
got in touch with Matt, who Iplayed cricket with, and I know,
really well, and I was like, canyou must be able to build me
(08:17):
something that makes my lifeeasier.
And that was what it was.
He, we built this really rubbishI've got screenshots of it now,
just in case they're quiteinterested to to look back on
and it made my life a loteasier, allow people to buy a
hundred club numbers and gothrough the transaction and only
buy numbers that are availableand save me hours.
But as we were advertising itfor my club, just on social
media saying, does anyone wantto buy a Hundred Club number?
(08:39):
I was getting messages fromother clubs saying, what's pitch
in?
We've not seen it.
It looks really helpful.
Can you put me in touch withthem?
And only really after a whiledid we think, oh, maybe it is
useful to other people.
There is actually a pain herethat isn't being solved
elsewhere.
And so I gave it to those clubsfor free.
Like I just again, I was I don'tknow if I want it to be a
business, like it's not reallyWhat I saw happening so the
(09:01):
games were free, and they had itfor free until two months ago,
to be honest, those blobs.
They were like the pilots, wehad 10 pilots that I still lean
on today to, every time werelease a new feature, I go to
them first and I give them firstchance of feeding back and using
it.
And then the second key pointwas When we started taking it a
bit more seriously, I thenstarted talking to other people
(09:24):
about it a lot more, includingJames Butcher, who's now in the
business, is chair of Pitchin.
And at that point we were like,okay, we're going to actually
start taking this seriously as abusiness.
We're going to formalize a lotof the stuff that we were
already talking about, bothlegally but also financially,
all this kind of stuff.
And we basically stoppedonboarding clubs and said since
(09:44):
we're doing that, let's stoponboarding.
I'm going to give Matt a fewmonths to basically build a
platform that is self service.
It's scalable.
Clubs can go on and do whateverthey need.
It isn't reliant on me copypasting stuff like the other
ones were.
And that was the key turningpoint to where we basically
decided.
We're going to pursue it as anactual kind of venture,
(10:05):
essentially.
And then we launched in Januaryto a waitlist, waitlist over the
next four months.
Launched in January to nearly100 clubs.
And that's really when itstarted taking off as a, yeah,
this is what we want to do.
This is actually helping, andit's a really purpose driven
business.
Paul (10:21):
Yeah, building a waitlist.
Daniel Priestley would be soproud.
I can tell.
Alex (10:25):
Yeah,
Paul (10:26):
so for those, Who are watching along at home, who
don't have kids involved ingrassroots football or
grassroots cricket or whateversport.
And I like, first of all, I haveto say, I like the idea that
you've built the platform to besport agnostic.
It's not for cricket kids.
It's not for football kids.
It's for sports clubs, whateverthat might be.
Alex (10:47):
Yeah.
It's interesting you say thatbecause we've got a lot of rugby
clubs, football clubs, smallcharities, scouts, we've got sea
cadets on there.
So anyone that relies onvolunteers to do fundraising,
basically.
But it does make messagingdifficult, which we'll probably
move on to when it comes tomarketing.
Paul (11:02):
So my son started in a club in June, July, and I just
wanna bring it to life to peoplea little bit as to how much
money actually these clubs need.
And we signed him up to, to playregularly with a league team.
And you'd pay subs of about 25 amonth to cover referee fees,
(11:22):
league games training time, allthat sort of thing.
It's not for profit, it justcovers the costs of running the
team.
And so you've got about sevenkids in a five a side team at
that age, paying that 25 amonth.
But then they did a fundraisingdrive.
And I was I'm I've got quite abig network, I'm quite a big fan
of helping not for profits.
(11:42):
I was like how much do weactually need?
You're asking us to raise money,but what's the target?
And they were like, as much aswe can get.
I was like because what are wegoing to buy with this?
Cause I just thought, he needs afootball shirt, which he's
already got.
He needs shorts, which he'salready got.
He needs a pair of socks, whichwe've bought him.
What else does he need?
We're like we need like atraining top for when it starts
to get chilly, so you have along sleeve training top on
okay, then you need a waterproofjacket for when it's raining and
(12:05):
then you need tracksuit bottomsfor the winter, and probably
some waterproof trousers, youcan buy those yourself okay, and
then we need a winter coat,because it's gonna get really
cold and you need something toget to the Games Inn before you
strip off and you starttraining, okay?
And we need probably some hatsand maybe some like neck gaiters
or something like that.
And I was like this is, and thisis all on top of buying football
(12:27):
boots, shin pads, goalkeepergloves, goalkeeper I'm like, I
had no idea it was going to bethis expensive per child.
And there's hundreds of childrenjust in that one club.
There's probably four or fivehundred registered youth at that
club.
And there are hundreds of theseclubs across the UK, right?
Alex (12:47):
yeah, and to be honest, football is expensive, but it's
probably one of the cheapersports as well, because if you
think whatever you spend onfootball, think about how much
you spend on cricket, like acricket bat nowadays is
astronomical for a kid that'sgrowing as well, but they're
going to need one, supposedlyevery year, every two years.
You're paying hundreds of poundsfor just the bat, never mind the
pads, the gloves, the kit.
(13:09):
Then also the club kit that youwere speaking about, which is
similar for cricket.
And then for clubs, to behonest, and that's for families
and we, the PitchIn, the waywe've built it for families does
allow us that they can spreadcosts of subscriptions and all
sorts over months because ofthat reason.
Having also grown up thinking,subscriptions are a lot, not
being able to buy new kit tryingto help families.
(13:29):
Play cricket or play whateversport they're trying to do.
But for clubs themselves forcricket as well, and this is
where it overlaps a little bitwith rugby because they tend to
have a bigger home than footballdo, like the facilities
management in cricket costs tensof thousands a year for clubs,
whether it's nets or, and if youdon't have nets then juniors
won't join and any club will diethat way, or or it's like
(13:50):
lawnmowers or, cause themaintenance of the pitch is to a
standard that football isn't.
Paul (13:57):
Yep.
Alex (13:58):
Sorry.
is something that, yeah, noother sport really has to
contend with, is that there's 40hours a week of a groundsman
putting effort into the pitch,using five different lawnmowers
for different heights, and thenthey outfield, and then the
boundary rope, if you've got arope, costs loads of money.
Or if you're like we've spent30, 40 grand on a massive net on
(14:18):
one side of the ground becausethey've built new houses on the
other side.
And it's apparently ourresponsibility to make sure they
don't get hit by a ball eventhough the ground was there for
120 years before they werebuilt.
Like that kind of thing.
It just becomes, and you can seewhy clubs fold, because it just
becomes ridiculous when you'regetting like 50, 000 to run a
three or four person cricketclub.
let alone, yeah, rugby,football, it just gets crazy.
Paul (14:43):
This is why I like talking to owners of purpose driven
businesses, right?
So I, what I hear from you isthat PitchIn, yes, it is built
now as a business rather than anot for profit, but the purpose
of the business is not to makeprofit, it's to drive.
It's to survive, right?
It's
Alex (15:00):
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Paul (15:02):
so it can be a business for good for all of those small
clubs.
Alex (15:08):
Yeah, exactly.
We were never trying to makemoney out of clubs necessarily.
We take like a small transactionfee to keep the infrastructure
going.
But really our business modelhas always been reduce the
amount for clubs and I'll getmoney elsewhere.
Like whether it's utilizing theaudience for some advertising
or, and even then I don't wantto put Google ads or affiliate
marketing necessarily.
(15:28):
It's more.
I want to go to specific brandsand say you are a cricket brand,
you could offer discounts tothis massive audience of kids
and parents.
Why not just sponsor the sites,the network that we've got?
And that's where we want to getto, because you're right, we are
purpose driven.
We're not there to make moneyout of clubs, like a lot of the
other team management apps canbe.
Paul (15:50):
Did you feel it was Something that you guys had to
build.
I don't know, it was, you werestruggling with the management
side of things yourself.
But like, why do you think it isthat you decided that you needed
to do something about it?
Why specifically you?
Cause everybody else just mournsabout it and gets on with it.
So what's the difference betweenthe next person and you?
Alex (16:10):
Yeah, I guess it was fortuitous that the stars
aligned with me and Matt and itwould work well.
I think the Having worked at astartup in the past.
I knew that you can just buildthings, like it's not, it's not
impossible, it's not beyond therealms of possibility to use
technology to your advantage,that I think a lot of people see
as a blocker.
And I think I've, personallyI've always had a bit more of a
(16:30):
drive to build things, I'm a bitmore of a builder, I like
solutionizing things, like it isa problem sometimes when people
don't want solutions, I'm tryingto like think of solutions.
And I've got loads of ideasabout how I can help people out
like day to day, using, whetherit's technology, whether it's
services, whatever it is.
And so my mind naturally justwent to, why am I doing all this
manual work?
(16:51):
When I'm emailing 200 peopleabout 100 club numbers, and then
4 are sending back, can I havenumber 16?
And then I'm like only one ofyou can have it.
And then I go to the treasurerand see if who's paid.
And one of them's paid 250 quid,because he also includes annual
subs.
I'm like, This is ridiculous.
There must technology can solveall of this problem.
And then I go searching for asolution and there isn't one,
and I'm like yeah, I'm just notafraid to build it myself then,
(17:12):
or get someone else that I knowclose to help me build it.
I think it's just that.
That, and also that I'm anaturally lazy person when it
comes to that kind of thing.
When it comes to admin, I'malways like, there must be.
an easier solution to this.
There's no reason why this isgoing to take me hours a week to
run, when all someone's doing isbuying a number.
That's all they're doing.
People buy lottery tickets.
It doesn't take the nationallottery hours to let people buy
(17:33):
lottery tickets.
Yeah, I don't know if thatanswers the question, but yeah,
that's how I came about it,really.
Paul (17:37):
I think that's interesting though, because there's
something about the skillset mixthere that just made it where
other people would see anobstacle there, you saw an
opportunity.
And I think that's the basis ofa lot of businesses, whether
they admit it or not, likethat's the basis for a lot of
businesses.
It's about being in the rightplace at the right time with the
right skillset and the right
Alex (17:56):
think so, yeah.
There's a lot more lookinvolved, I think, than people
give it credit for.
I think, obviously, this is hardwork, there's skills you have to
be the right person, but Ithink, The problem existing and
me taking over fundraising at myclub happened at the perfect
time for me and the perfect timefor Matt and everything aligned.
And I have enough kind ofcontact in, it's almost like
(18:17):
I've spent a lifetime buildingup contacts in cricket to help
me build at least the initialversions and get the business
off the ground.
In a way that if I was justrandomly, I'm going to, I'm
going to start something, abusiness, and then I'm just,
then I'm going to think about.
Yeah.
What problem is it solving?
How am I going to get contacts?
All this kind of stuff.
Just, I just didn't come at itlike that.
It was just lucky that I didn'tneed to worry about that.
There is a pain because it's mypain.
(18:39):
I've got the contacts becauseI've spent, 30 years playing
cricket across six differentcounties.
And it just felt, yeah, like I'dspent my life building up to
that, building that which, mightsound stupid, but it just,
that's what it just felt likefor me.
Paul (18:54):
Yep.
So then, you mentioned earlieron that you found that there was
a struggle around messaging whenthere was multiple fundraisers
in a small organisation.
Do you want to walk us throughthat?
Alex (19:05):
Yeah.
So one challenge, we have hadsome challenges with marketing,
I think, fundamentally comesdown to probably the fact that
we're not marketing,understanding whether we're B2B
or B2C, and we're actuallyneither, we're like B2Volunteer,
and marketing to volunteers, arange of sports, a range of
ages, has been really tough fora few different reasons, really.
(19:26):
Educating people that have donethe same thing for decades, that
there is actually a potentialsolution out there.
But people that aren'tnecessarily looking for the
solution because they're quitetechnophobic, like they're not
actively looking for thetechnical solution.
So like getting them on board,making them understand that
it's, it makes their life easierand that we're different to the
other management apps that comeat them and say we can manage
(19:46):
your fixtures and availabilityand that we're only solely
focused on raising the money andactually hitting the the
revenue.
The other thing that has alwaysbeen a problem has been that
unlike business, so if you'retargeting businesses, you find a
decision maker, either they havebudget or their boss has budget,
you can get a meeting and youget a decision because you know
who's making the decision.
These places they wait forcommittee meetings and committee
(20:08):
meetings could be anywherebetween, next month and three
months time.
They, everything's done bycommittee.
Nothing, there's no,everything's there's no
everything's centralized aroundthe volunteers and everyone
making a democratic decision.
It's very rare.
And we do get some clubs likethis, I mean my club was like
this, which is why I built itreally where they basically give
the reins to someone to go andfundraise however they see fit.
(20:28):
A lot of the time it's now we'regoing to get committed and we're
going to decide.
And yeah, the messagingspecifically was difficult for a
couple of reasons.
One is that, like you said,we're quite agnostic, which
makes us, it sounds great, butwhen you're trying to build
something at least vertically atthe start, so that you can Built
on a big product led, tooagnostic.
Like I said, it can help anyonethat uses volunteers for
(20:48):
fundraising.
So we do get Sea Cadets and wedo get scouts and we do get all
these things where I'm like, wecan help you and we do help you.
But remember, it's built firstand foremost for grassroots
sport and specifically cricket,rugby and bubble, to be honest,
initially.
And that's difficult from amessaging point of view on the
website and marketing.
It's also difficult from a.
Product point of view.
(21:09):
So like Matt's very good atkeeping us in check for is that
really our kind of current focuswhen I'm coming back with like
feedback from sea cadets?
Is that really going to help thehundreds of creative clubs that
we're getting on board?
And the other one as well,actually finding the contacts
is, Harder, I think, causehaving worked in kind of
(21:31):
businesses in the past where youcan go on LinkedIn and search
for a role, no one puts theirvolunteer roles on their
LinkedIn.
Not, I can't search for who'sthe fundraising manager at
cricket clubs because peoplehave put it on the LinkedIn.
Some people do, but most peopledon't.
I don't have it on mine, forexample.
So I'm at fault as well.
So like finding those contactsis so hard to then market to.
Luckily for like cricket, we'vegot playcricket, which is like a
(21:53):
free site that every club prettymuch uses.
They've got 6, 000 clubs onthere, but that doesn't mean
they keep it up to date.
It doesn't mean that they havethe people on there with their
email addresses and all thatkind of stuff.
And it's very manual.
I have to go on and paste theemail address and I'm not going
to do that for 6, 000 clubs.
So yeah, there's quite a fewkind of stumbling blocks that we
didn't really realize at thestart that we learned as we went
around marketing generally andmessaging and our messaging on
(22:14):
our website changes quiteregularly based on feedback.
Got it.
Paul (22:17):
It's certainly not a filter on LinkedIn, is it?
Let's be honest.
There are some, there's somegreat filters on LinkedIn.
There's some terrible ones, butvolunteer work is, and as you
said, even if you are doing it,like I've got, so I used to be a
volunteer police officer andI've got that proudly displayed
on mine cause it does add adimension to my experience.
But were I running a footballclub?
First of all, it's not for me.
(22:39):
But No, I probably wouldn't putit on there.
And I do know people that areinvolved in that.
who don't have it on their
Alex (22:45):
especially the roles as well, because I'm not searching
for anyone that's a volunteer ata Cricket Club either.
I'm searching for someone that'seither a treasurer or a
fundraiser, or there's no pointin me getting in touch with the
second team captain a lot,because I am reliant on them
passing it over to someonethat's more relevant, and
everything gets lost intranslation at that point.
Paul (23:04):
It on your behalf, yeah,
Alex (23:06):
And selling.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So I, so we do a lot of and tomitigate that, I do a lot of
phone calls and demos.
I go on site to clubs a lot.
So I do a lot of miles drivingto clubs and joining committee
meetings and trying to getfirstly on board them clearly.
But secondly, like I do a lot ofnote taking on what words are
actually using as well, whichhelps the messaging, which we
(23:27):
were talking about.
So like the current message onthe website is word by word.
Basically got, when I went to afew clubs and said you describe
to me what PitchIn Platform doesfor you.
And then I just regurgitatedtheir words, cause I'm like,
that's What every other club isgoing to be looking for then.
Because originally our wordswere, it sounds great, but raise
more funds, spend less timedoing it, was our original
headline.
And that's lovely, I think itrolls off the tongue great, but
(23:48):
Dave at the Cricket Club isn'tgoing to read it and go, that
answers my question that theyautomate 100 clubs.
It just doesn't.
Whereas when I asked him what itdoes, he's it takes out the
grunt work of the admin of this.
And I'm like, it doesn't soundas exciting, but it clearly
spells out what we do.
So I do a lot of that,basically.
It's backwards and forwards withclubs and talking to them a lot
until we've really nailed it.
Paul (24:06):
I think that's fantastic cause you've applied the
community spirit of grassrootssport to how you go about your
business development and yourmarketing.
I think that's I actually, I'vespoke for a long time about the
importance of marketing, Teammembers in SaaS businesses being
at least either invited along tosales calls or watching
(24:27):
playbacks of sales calls for thesame reason.
Like you need to know how theprospects and the leads and the
customers themselves talk aboutyour product.
Because you can have all the
Alex (24:39):
Down to the words Yeah, like what words are they
actually using when theydescribe you?
You can't even rely on Googlesearch for it, like what's, what
they're searching, like what arethey actually verbally saying?
Or writing, like in an email,what are they actually using as
the words?
Cause no one searches Google forgrunt work, takes the grunt work
out, but that's just how theytalk, like it, yeah.
And I think, One thing that'salways motivated us to do that
(25:03):
kind of thing, and for me to geton so many calls, because I'm
not necessarily in the previousbusinesses, I'll actively avoid
a lot of meetings and stuff,because I'm not a big meeting
person, but these ones aredifferent, because these are
volunteers, and if they can giveup their time to grab a club,
I'm sure I can give up 15minutes of my time to show them
a platform that's going to helpthem and help onboard them as
well.
I do a lot more hand holding ofIf we were truly trying to just
(25:26):
make it a product led businessfrom the beginning, Purely cause
it, Yeah, selfishly, it makes usfeel good as well.
When we see a new club on there,they raise money just make us
feel good,
Paul (25:33):
alex, I've really enjoyed the conversation this morning.
When James first introduced us,I wasn't quite sure where the
conversation was going to go,but we have so many shared
experiences and ideas.
I've really enjoyed our chattogether.
If the audience are listeningalong at home, they want to find
out more about PitchIn, or theywant to chat with you, maybe
(25:54):
they know somebody who's theright person they can introduce
you to, how can they get intouch?
Alex (25:58):
So we've got a website, PitchInplatform.
com is the website.
You can get in touch with me viathere.
You can find me atalexatPitchInplatform.
com, which is quite nice andsimple.
You can find me on LinkedIn.
There's not many Alex Fitchitson LinkedIn as well.
It's quite nice to have a uniquename in that sense.
And yeah, you can contact me inany way.
I think my mobile number's alsoon the website if they want to
WhatsApp me as well.
(26:19):
But that's the level I'm at theminute where I'm more than happy
for clubs to ring me, WhatsAppme, email me, LinkedIn message
me, whatever, and answer anyquestions they've got really.
Yeah.
Paul (26:29):
Thank you very much for your time today, Alex.
It's been a genuine pleasure.
Alex (26:32):
No, thank you.
Thanks for having me on.
Been great.
Paul (26:35):
And thank you for watching along at home or listening along
if you're listening on thepodcast.
Please do, if you've enjoyed thestart of season two, we've got
lots of plans for somefascinating guests across the
next year or so, please doreview the podcast and leave us
some stars, leave us somecomments back.
It means the world to us whenyou do but thank you very much
for taking your time to, tolisten to our episodes also.
(26:57):
podcast, that's why we do it.
Thank you very much and I'll seeyou again next week.
Bye bye.
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