You are asking an investor to put money into your SportsTech startup.
Why should they?
You have built a product. Perhaps you have pilots with clubs, growing registrations or encouraging conversations with potential customers.
How much confidence should an investor place in those signals? What do they reveal about demand, continued usage and your ability to build a sustainable business?
That was the question behind my Building SportsTech conversation with Luís Gutman, Managing Partner at OW Ventures, which manages COREangels SportsTech.
One example stood out: a company developing technology for shoes attracted investment before generating revenue. Tests with established brands helped support the decision.
It raises a useful question for any founder preparing to fundraise: what evidence makes your business worth backing at its current stage?
Below, I draw five practical questions from our conversation to help you examine your own case for investment.
Watch the conversation, then ask yourself: which of these questions would be hardest to answer today?
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An investment case with no revenue
One example from Luís stayed with me: a company developing deep technology for shoes that had no revenue yet.
It had, however, conducted relevant tests with established brands. Luís explained that his investment approach allows for the development time and capital that hardware and deep technology can require before generating sales. Those tests contributed to accepting the company despite its lack of revenue.
Elsewhere in the conversation, he described an expectation of at least six months of traction in the pre-seed approach he was discussing. That traction can include credible pilots and tests with prospective paying customers. The six-month expectation is specific to that approach, rather than a rule for every investor.
My takeaway is that founders need to explain which uncertainty their evidence has reduced, and what remains unresolved.
A technical test might establish that a product works. A purchase establishes willingness to pay under particular conditions. Continued usage tells you something about ongoing value. Each helps answer a different question.
With that in mind, here is how I would review an early-stage SportsTech business before approaching investors.
1. How well do you understand the problem you are solving
Luís placed domain expertise among his top investment criteria. It can come from the founder, the team or relevant advisors. He wants to understand why these people are equipped to solve this particular problem.
His instruction on presenting the business was simple:
“Start with the problem.”
Consider a hypothetical product for coaches. Describing it as an AI platform for better training decisions leaves the customer’s difficulty unexplained.
You get closer when you can describe the actual work: a coach combines information from several systems before adjusting an athlete’s programme. Now there is a workflow to investigate, a current alternative to understand, and a consequence to assess.
Before refining your pitch, ask a prospective customer:
When did this problem last occur?
What did you do about it?
What did that cost in time, money or missed opportunities?
Listen for corrections to your assumptions. An advisor’s name on a slide is useful only if the expertise helps the company understand and act on the problem.
2. What happens when your pilot ends
Luís sees credible pilots as potentially meaningful early evidence, especially in B2B businesses with long sales cycles.
For me, that makes the next question essential: what is the pilot designed to help someone decide?
Imagine a club testing software intended to reduce an operational task. Staff might like the demonstration, yet use it only once. They might use it regularly, yet still need approval from a budget owner. They might achieve a useful result, yet require substantial custom work before wider deployment.
Those situations have different implications for the founder.
My practical suggestion is to agree four things with the customer:
The task the product will improve and who will use it.
How the outcome will be assessed against the current approach.
Who will evaluate the result and approve spending.
What evidence would justify a paid next step, and when that decision will happen.
If a pilot is already running, you can still clarify these points. It gives both sides a way to interpret the result.
For an investor conversation, go beyond the number of pilots. Explain what one has demonstrated, what the customer has committed to, and what still stands between the test and a purchase.
3. Are customers coming back at a cost you can sustain
Luís challenged metrics without a clear connection to potential revenue. For consumer products, he highlighted people returning and using the product over successive weeks or months.
Registrations are a starting point. To understand the business, you also need to examine what happens afterwards.
For a training app, I would look at a group of people who joined in the same period: how many continued using the core function, how many paid, and how many stayed? The observation period should fit the activity the product supports.
Then look at the cost of reaching and serving them. Luís warned that founders can underestimate acquisition costs, particularly in B2C businesses. He also acknowledged that high initial costs need to be understood in the context of the company’s strategy.
Choose one customer group and examine:
How they found you and what acquiring them cost.
Whether they continue using the product and paying.
What onboarding, support and delivery require.
Which costs you expect to improve, and why.
For B2B founders, include the work needed to win the account and implement the product. Founder time matters even when it does not appear as a separate expense.
This is my application of the discussion: make the next customer easier to assess by understanding the customers you already have. A total user count or a prominent club logo cannot answer those questions on its own.
4. Does the capital fit the business you want to build
Luís described how a traditional venture investor’s return expectations influence the assessment of market size and growth potential.
A company can serve customers well and become profitable while offering a growth path that does not suit a particular fund. That is a reason to examine the financing route alongside your ambition for the business.
We also discussed seedstrapping: raising an initial round with the intention of reaching profitability and avoiding repeated fundraising. It requires investors whose expectations fit that plan.
For founders pursuing a larger market, one example from the conversation was especially useful. Luís described a company measuring audience emotions whose technology could serve football and other settings, including business conferences. It already had customers beyond sport.
The expansion argument had something concrete behind it.
Before adding another market to your pitch, investigate:
Whether the same product solves an important problem for that buyer.
How much additional development and delivery it would require.
How you could reach and sell to that customer.
What evidence supports the opportunity so far.
An ambitious market story is easier to assess when you can explain the path from the customer you serve today to the next one. It also helps you decide whether that expansion is a business you want to pursue.
5. What will new funding enable you to demonstrate
When I asked about follow-on investment, Luís emphasised a clear plan for the money: what the company would build, how long the capital would last, and what it intended to achieve.
He also warned against beginning the process under severe cash pressure. Fundraising can take months. A founder facing an imminent cash shortage has less room to negotiate.
My practical reading is to connect the funding request to a milestone that changes what you know about the business.
For example, a club-facing startup might use capital to test whether it can implement the product for another customer without extensive custom engineering. A consumer startup might need to establish whether an acquisition channel brings customers who remain paying users.
These are illustrative milestones, rather than criteria Luís prescribed.
Write the plan in this form:
With this capital, we will test whether ______. We will assess it using ______, over ______. If the result is weak, we will ______.
Then connect the hiring, development and commercial spending to that objective.
The same reasoning applies to AI. Luís sees opportunities for smaller teams to do more, but he also raised the cost of using AI in operations and products. Explain which task it improves, what it costs, and how you will assess whether the improvement is worthwhile.
Choose one thing to prove next
You do not need to resolve every uncertainty before speaking with an investor. You do need to distinguish the evidence you have from the assumptions you are still testing.
My suggestion is to put five answers on one page:
The customer problem you understand best.
What your strongest pilot or customer relationship has demonstrated.
What you know about continued usage and customer costs.
Why the financing route fits the business you want to build.
The milestone new capital would help you reach.
Next to each answer, write the biggest unanswered question.
If you already have a product, choose the question most likely to change your next commercial decision. Agree a test with a customer who could genuinely buy, including the evidence needed for a next step.
If you are preparing to start, begin with the problem. Ask someone in your target market to describe the last time it happened and how they handled it. Use that account to decide what deserves a test.
That is the kind of conversation I want to have through Building SportsTech: specific experiences that help founders decide what to do next.
Before your next investor meeting, finish this sentence: “An investor should back us because we have demonstrated ______, and this capital will enable us to ______.”
Be specific about the evidence behind both claims. Where your answer depends on an assumption, you have found something worth testing.
If you have run a SportsTech pilot, what happened when it ended: a paid contract, another test, or no clear next step?
Share your experience in the comments. I would like to explore what helps founders move from testing to a buying decision.
Based on my Building SportsTech interview with Luís Gutman. The practical questions and exercises are my application of the conversation.
I work with SportsTech founders on customer validation and go-to-market decisions through GTM Sports.