When I look at an early-stage SportsTech roadmap, I can usually see where the team feels safest. It is in the product column. There is another integration to complete, another dashboard to tidy up, and another feature that would make the demo easier to sell.
I understand the attraction. Product work leaves evidence behind: a screen, a release, a ticket moved to done. A week spent speaking with potential customers may leave you with nothing quite so presentable. Sometimes it leaves you with an uncomfortable answer: the problem is less urgent than you thought, the person who loves the product cannot buy it, or the budget belongs to a department you have never met.
Those are not wasted weeks. They are often the cheapest weeks in the life of the company. Before adding more product, I would want evidence in four areas: the problem, the customer’s current behaviour, the buying system and the commitment someone is prepared to make. Interest is encouraging. Evidence changes what you do next.
Four kinds of evidence worth collecting
Compliments are not evidence. “This is interesting” is not evidence. A friendly club executive accepting a demo is not evidence. Even a pilot can be weak evidence if nobody defines what happens after it. Useful market evidence changes the probability that a customer will act. For an early-stage SportsTech company, I would look for four kinds of evidence.
1. Problem evidence
The problem must be specific, recurring, and important enough to deserve attention. Ask about the last time it happened. What triggered it? Who was involved? What did the team do? How much time, money, risk, or frustration did it create? What happened when they did nothing? A problem described in general terms is still a hypothesis. A problem reconstructed from recent behaviour is evidence.
“Clubs struggle with fan engagement” is too broad. “Our membership team exports three lists every Monday, manually removes duplicates and still cannot identify which lapsed members should receive an offer” is usable. The second statement gives you a workflow, frequency, owner, and consequence.
2. Behaviour evidence
Important problems create behaviour. Customers build spreadsheets, hire agencies, add people to a process, tolerate bad software, ask an intern to do manual work, or simply accept a costly outcome. The current workaround tells you more than an opinion about your proposed solution. If nobody is doing anything, one of three things may be true: the problem is not important, the organisation has accepted it, or the person you are speaking with does not own the consequences.
Your job is to understand which one.
3. Buyer evidence
The person who uses a product may not be the person who wants it. The person who wants it may not control the budget. The person who owns the budget may still need procurement, IT, legal or data approval. In sport, this distinction matters because organisations are often small in headcount but complex in decision-making. A performance analyst can love a product and still have no path to purchase. An innovation manager can sponsor a pilot without owning the operational budget required for renewal.
You need to identify at least four roles:
· User: who works with the product.
· Champion: who wants the change to happen.
· Decision-maker: who can approve the purchase.
· Budget owner: whose budget pays for it.
Sometimes one person fills several roles. Do not assume it.
4. Commitment evidence
The strongest evidence involves a cost to the customer. That cost does not need to be a full annual contract. It can be time, access, data, internal introductions, a signed pilot agreement or payment. The useful question is: what did the customer agree to do next? A prospect who says the product is exciting but will not introduce the budget owner has given you weak evidence. A prospect who shares data, schedules a technical review, and agrees a decision date has given you stronger evidence.
A simple scorecard for the next decision
Score each category from zero to three.
Problem
0: We believe the problem exists.
1: People confirm it in general terms.
2: Several people describe recent examples and consequences.
3: The same pattern appears across a clear customer segment.
Behaviour
0: We do not know what customers do today.
1: They say they would like a better solution.
2: They use a workaround or pay for an alternative.
3: The workaround is frequent, costly, and owned by a named team.
Buyer
0: We only know the user.
1: We have a possible internal champion.
2: We understand the decision process and budget source.
3: We have tested this map in several real opportunities.
Commitment
0: Positive feedback.
1: A follow-up meeting or demo.
2: Access to data, stakeholders, or a structured evaluation.
3: Payment, a signed pilot, or a commercial decision with a date.
The maximum score is 12. The purpose is not to create a scientific valuation of the company. It is to expose where confidence comes from. A score of nine built mostly on compliments is weaker than a score of six built on repeated behaviour and a paid test.
What I would do before touching the roadmap
Before committing to another product sprint, write down the assumption that could still make the product commercially irrelevant. Then run a seven-day evidence sprint: Day 1: choose one narrow customer segment and one problem. Days 2–5: conduct ten conversations focused on recent behaviour, the current workaround and the buying process. Day 6: score the evidence and compare patterns.
Day 7: make one decision. Continue, narrow the segment, change the offer or stop the planned feature. The output of the week is not a longer list of requests. It is a better decision. Product progress matters. But before adding more product, make sure you are reducing commercial uncertainty as well.
A pattern I would watch
A team hears that coaches want faster video analysis and immediately starts building a richer dashboard. The useful question is what coaches did after the last match when the analysis arrived too late. Did they stay late, ask an analyst to export clips, use a different tool, or simply move on? The answer tells you far more about urgency than a positive reaction to a demo.
Before Monday’s product meeting
Pick the assumption on the roadmap that would be most expensive to discover was wrong. Then define one customer action - sharing data, introducing the budget owner, accepting a paid test - that would give you meaningful evidence this week.
If this is where your company is stuck, I work with early-stage SportsTech teams on customer evidence, positioning and GTM. You can find the details at GTM Sports. And if you want the next playbook, subscribe to Building SportsTech.