Team Topia

Team Topia creates software to manage sports leagues, teams, and competitions. Our flagship product, SwimTopia, is the #1 online platform for US Summer/Rec swim teams with over 1,800 customers and on-track to generate over $1 million in revenue in 2021.

While we have started with a focus on the swimming market, our ambitions have always been much bigger—to serve a very wide range of sports and activities. By starting with swimming and diving, we are well-positioned to create a robust and extensible platform to support the hundreds of “niche” sports that collectively make up a majority of the global $5 billion sports software market.

We are raising investment via Wefunder to expand into new markets. With the funds raised we expect to (1) significantly expand our foothold in the year-round/club and international swim market segments, (2) gain meaningful traction in additional sports, (3) more than double our revenue, and (4) raise a Series A investment round, converting notes raised in this campaign to equity, within the next two years.*

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TRACTION & TRACK RECORD

Team Topia has a history of being extremely capital efficient and creating tremendous value for customers with a surprisingly small team and few resources.

By 2019, with just $630K in funding, Team Topia had successfully launched 3 products and acquired a competitor.

Team Topia provides a complete end-to-end solution for competitive swim teams including:

• SwimTopia – Web-based team management with a dizzying array of features, including online registration to join a team, volunteer commitment tracking, simple drag & drop website updates, and email and push notifications. Plus features specific to event-based sports like per-athlete event entries and automated relay selections. SwimTopia also provides a host of features that ease management of whole leagues, a capability that has encouraged dozens of swim leagues to adopt SwimTopia for all their member teams.
• Meet Maestro – Our revolutionary software to run swim meets is exceptionally intuitive and efficient. It is meant to run on the pool deck and integrates with various timing systems to collect times and DQs to score events and generate awards and other reports. It replaces archaic software that has been the dominant solution for swim meet management since the 1990’s. While we still have work to do to fully replace the incumbent solution, we’ve been thrilled by how quickly teams and leagues have been switching to—and loving—Meet Maestro.
• SwimTopia Mobile – Our parent-focused companion mobile app provides easy access to team calendars, volunteer commitments, and complete swim histories for their kids. With push notification alerts, our mobile app is a vital communication tool for teams to notify parents of practice cancellations or meet delays. On meet days, our unique Live Bar feature broadcasts the current event and heat to keep meets running smoothly and to help parents avoid missing their kid’s races. With a premium Pro subscription, mobile app users can unlock full heat sheets, live meet results and scores, and proactive upcoming event reminders so they’ll never miss a swim again.

All the products in our portfolio complement each other, thus encouraging users of one product to adopt the other products to maximize the value they receive from our platform. This encourages “network effects,” where it is more convenient for teams using our software if other teams they compete with also use Team Topia software. This dynamic encourages positive word-of-mouth and viral spread of our products, as our customers encourage more and more teams to try our software.

A word-of-mouth strategy will only be effective if customers are overwhelmingly satisfied with the products and services being delivered. As a company, we are intently focused on delivering high quality products and excellent customer service. By every measure, Team Topia has very, very happy customers.

The satisfaction of our customers is evidenced by the very high ratings of our products on mobile app stores and major app review sites, typically 4.8/5 or better and consistently higher than the ratings of our competitors.

Happy customers are also loyal customers. As a result, we enjoy an insanely low level of churn for a SaaS product, averaging less than 2% per year. Once a team or league signs up for our service, it is exceedingly rare for them to cancel, and rarer still for them to switch to a competitor. Of the few teams who have switched to a competitor, several later returned to become our customers again. In fact, 100% of customers who joined in our first two years of operation are still Team Topia customers today.

Team Topia has a track record of consistently strong growth, averaging over 50% per year since inception, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the vast majority of swim teams and leagues to cancel their seasons in 2020. As a result, Team Topia's revenues were down significantly from 2019. During that challenging time, we focused on adding features to support virtual swim meets (meets conducted at multiple pools and/or different times) and disseminating information to help our customers safely conduct practices and meets. 

Fortunately, by the 2021 season, most–but not all–teams and leagues had resumed competition. While participation was still down relative to 2019, through a combination of added customers and increased usage of our products, year-to-date revenue through September 2021 ($887K) has already surpassed the total revenue for all of 2019, and is on track to exceed $1 million this year.

MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY FOR GROWTH

There is huge potential for Team Topia to grow in two distinct stages: (1) expanding our existing foothold in the year-round/club and international swimming markets and (2) extending from that base to serve many additional sports, most notably timed sports like track and field and cross-country running, and judged sports like gymnastics and cheerleading.

The US Swimming & Diving market is divided into 3 main market segments:

• Summer/Recreational – comprising roughly 75% of the market with an estimated 2 million participants, these are neighborhood, municipal, and country club swim programs typically for kids ages 5–18 and hosting meets between May and July. SwimTopia is currently the #1 online platform for this market segment.
• High School & Middle School – these are school-affiliated teams with some 300 thousand swimmers and divers in the US. SwimTopia has significant traction in this market segment, but also plenty of room to grow.
• Year-Round/Club – these teams attract the most serious athletes, typically ages 7–18 and who compete in one or two meets per month, all year long. These teams are usually affiliated with USA Swimming and are frequently coach-run, for-profit businesses. Because these teams operate year-round and have more demanding feature requirements, they are willing to pay higher SaaS subscription rates. Additionally, the high transaction volume makes transaction fees a major revenue stream for this segment. Because we don’t yet provide the billing and invoicing features needed by most of these teams, Team Topia does not yet market to this segment and currently has a handful of year-round swim team customers.

By developing features to cater to the year-round/club segment, and selling and marketing to these teams, Team Topia has the near-term potential to more than double its revenue. We regularly field inbound requests from year-round/club teams disappointed with existing team management systems and who are looking for a better alternative. Given the pent-up demand in this segment, we expect to roll up market share rapidly once we start marketing and selling to these teams.

While the opportunity exists to grow by much more than 10x just within the swim & dive market, a much bigger opportunity lies in expanding to support the hundreds of “niche” sports that make up a majority of the $5 billion per year global sports software market. 

The global sports software market is big, fragmented, and filled with competitors. However, nearly all the attention is focused on the biggest four sports: basketball, baseball, soccer, and football. These four sports make up about one-third of the overall sports software market.

The remaining two-thirds is filled with dozens and dozens of smaller sports and activities—most of which have needs that are very different from those of the biggest sports. Because these needs are largely unmet, the majority of the global software market is not well-served by existing solutions, creating a huge opportunity for a company that can address the neglected needs of these organizations.

We expect our rate of growth to accelerate as we expand into additional markets. Expanding to the year-round swim market segment and additional sports should significantly reduce the effects of seasonality on our business. Additionally, network effects, when a customer derives more value as they and the teams they interact with use more Team Topia products, should continue to drive usage and adoption in existing markets. Our goals are to (1) more than double revenue within 24 months to $2M+, and (2) to surpass $10M in annual revenue within 5 years.*

OUR TEAM

We have an exceptionally capable and experienced management team. Every member of our management team has prior experience founding and/or running a business.

Our Founder and CEO, Mason Hale, was previously the Chief Technologist of world-renowned design firm, Frog Design. During his eight years at Frog, Mason led the global digital technology group which spanned nine studios and created web, mobile, desktop and embedded software applications for clients including Microsoft, T-Mobile, Disney, General Electric, Dell, SAP, and many others. 

Elli Overton, our Director of Sales and Marketing, was a 3-time Olympic swimmer for Australia. She was team captain for the UC Berkeley women’s swim team while completing her business degree at the Haas School of Business. Elli worked in the nonprofit world, helping to raise millions of dollars for cancer survivors, before returning to her swimming roots and opening her own swim instruction business. She is the author of Jay's Swimming Journey, a children's book for young swimmers.

Team Topia is very fortunate to have the support of a stellar group of investors and advisors.

Team Topia is guided by an outstanding Board of Directors.

• Gordon Daugherty – Gordon is the co-founder and President of Capital Factory, the most active early stage investor and the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Texas.
• Bryan Jones – A seasoned entrepreneur and startup executive, Bryan is also a former captain of the national champion University of Texas men’s swim team, and a former world and American record-holder.
• Mark Metz – Mark is a serial-entrepreneur with 3 previous nine-figure exits. Mark is a strong supporter of the Atlanta business community and founder of the 22TechPark startup incubator. Mark was also 2-time Southern Conference swimmer of the year and an Olympic Trials qualifier.
• Mason Hale – Our founder and CEO.

By participating in this campaign, you too can join the ranks of these exceptional Team Topia investors and advisors.

SUMMARY

The funds raised via this campaign will be used primarily to grow our product development team, enabling us to update our 3 products more quickly and efficiently. As we launch into new markets, a significant portion of the funds is earmarked for sales and marketing efforts.

The investment raised by this crowdfunding campaign will enable us to more quickly expand our existing foothold in the year-round/club and international swimming market segments and to take our first meaningful steps to serve additional sports. With the expected resulting boost in growth and revenue, and with proven traction beyond swimming, we will be well-positioned to raise a Series A round of $5 million+ to aggressively pursue our multi-sport Team Topia strategy.*

There are a wide range of potential exit opportunities, including acquisition or a public offering. Please be advised that investors should expect to wait several years before a liquidity event. We are simultaneously committed to delivering an exceptional return to our investors, serving the needs of our customers, and providing for our employees.

Investors in this campaign will receive the valuable perks listed above associated with the their level of investment. Perks are cumulative. Higher tiers receive all the perks of lower tiers. We look forward to welcoming many existing Team Topia customers as investors, and we want to show our appreciation for their grassroots support with SwimTopia, Meet Maestro, and Team Topia branded apparel and gear they'll be proud to wear and use.

* Projections of future results are not guaranteed.