On building the future of football with Pete Davis (One Future Football) | Startup Playbook Ep170

My guest for Ep170 of The Startup Playbook Podcast, was the Co-founder & CEO of One Future Football, Pete Davis.

Pete Davis, my co-founder in a new startup called One Future Football, we just came out of stealth a few weeks ago to announce our $3M pre-seed funding round led by Blackbird and for the first time on a podcast we are sharing more details about 1FF and our journey so far.

So what exactly is One Future Football?

1FF is a new global football league with 12 teams located all over the world that compete head to head but instead of “real people” kicking around a football inside a stadium, we’ve built 252 CGI generated athletes that all have their own looks, names, attributes, personalities and backstories.

Results are decided by a Data-science led match engine which we then convert into a 8-10 minute broadcast designed for the way that GenZ fans engage with content, ie something that is more bitesized, narrative and storyline driven with professionals like Clive Tyldesley doing the commentary for the broadcasts.

Our real value proposition however is changing the way that fans can engage with football. We allow fans to earn points, make decisions on training and contracts of players via Player Cards and we even allow fans to own a part of their favourite team through Club Credits where they can be a co-owner of a team alongside the likes of Naomi Osaka, Nick Kyrgios, Steve Smith, Kamaru Usman, Chris Smalling, Jesse Lingard, Patrice Evra and many more!

Prior to 1FF, Pete had deep experience within sports and startups. He ran one of Australia's first social media agencies called Get Glossy and also was the Founder and CEO of Ampjar, a startup that ran through Jason Calacanis' Launch Accelerator program.

In this episode we covered a wide variety of topics including;
Pete’s background prior to 1FF in sports and building multiple companies
The importance of doing your life's work
The 1FF fundraising journey
Building in stealth vs in public
How to attract your first key hires
We we decided to build in-person vs remote
& much more