THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2026 · THE FACEOFF · VOL XII

FIVE STAKEHOLDERS, FIVE CONVERSATIONS

Built his own company in sport 🏟️

Kept meeting founders with nowhere to meet 🤝

Now Alex Laird runs a free network of 150 of them across 43 countries 🌍

Episode 6 on YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts

This week's FACEOFF 🤼 puts our sixth guest in the chair, and our first from overseas.

Alex Laird is based in London and spent the last year building his own company in sport. A university accelerator and a grant took him to conferences in New York, Europe and London, where he kept meeting founders with nowhere to meet each other, so he built the room himself: Sporting Founders, a private, free network of 150 founders across 43 countries, building everything from data analytics and sponsorships to broadcasting and youth sports.

This was his first podcast. Twenty-two minutes with him. Five takeaways below; the full conversation is one tap away above. Full disclosure: Paul is a member, or as Alex calls it, a player, in Sporting Founders' youth sports subgroup.

FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM EPISODE 6

1. Five stakeholders, five conversations.
   About twenty of his 150 players build in youth sports: coaching tools, player development, club management, recruiting, safety, data for academies, fundraising. They all run into the same buyer map. The coach cares about a decision, the director of sport may make it, the school board has to approve it, and the parent pays for the athlete to benefit. That's five relationships to keep up before one sale, and in Alex's read the openings are at the infrastructure level: make life easier for the people who run youth sports, and the kids get the benefit downstream.

2. Six founding players, one LinkedIn post, and a form that broke on launch day.
   He lined up six founders he'd met on the conference circuit to give the network credibility, then announced it on LinkedIn: 70,000 impressions, more than 300 applications, narrowed to 150 founders in 43 countries. The application form on the site broke under the attention, so he spoke to every applicant himself, by message or by phone, and that listening is where the seven subgroups came from, data and analytics, sponsorships and partnerships, youth sports, broadcasting and media among them. “We've essentially now hit the start line.”

3. From London, American youth sports looks bonkers.
   The US is $28 billion of a $38 billion global youth sports market, and an average family spends about $883 a year per kid, which from a UK and European perspective is, in his word, bonkers. The US also has the appetite to try new technology that the UK and Europe lack, so the tech crosses the Atlantic slowly. His advice to the coaches and directors over there is to take on the American energy, and his word for the founders on both sides: they are not out there money grabbing.

4. Data privacy with kids is non-negotiable, and the gatekeepers are partners.
   Parents and safeguarding officers are watching, and whether the rulebook is GDPR or American law, a founder has to get it right immediately. The mindset shift is to stop treating them as a bottleneck: the club or school you're selling to has almost certainly dealt with the issue before and wants the same outcome you do, so lean on them as collaborators.

5. Free, forever, and “trust the process.”
   He will never charge a founder; members get the WhatsApp groups, the mentors he calls coaches and partners in law, accounting, branding and PR for nothing, and private-but-free is how he stands apart from the paid communities with thousands of members. Monetization is not the issue right now; events are the plan for a year out. His advice to investors and founders alike is the same two words, trust the process, because the sales cycles are long and confusing across sports and credibility comes from case studies. Rapid fire: field hockey, centre midfield, and one word for the players group on a Monday morning: persevere. The next intake opens around March 2027.

That's the short version.
The full twenty-two minutes, with why members are called players, prospects and coaches, what he says no to in an application, why the lawyers and accountants matter when everyone goes straight to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, and a rapid-fire round that ends on one word for a Monday morning, is on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and every episode of THE FACEOFF lives at thecoachsboard.com/podcast.

FIND ALEX AND SPORTING FOUNDERS
sportingfounders.com · Register your interest · LinkedIn · Instagram · X · Alex on LinkedIn

FOLLOW THE COACH'S BOARD
YouTube · Instagram · X · TikTok · thecoachsboard.com

LOOKING AHEAD ⏭️

THE FACEOFF 🤼 is two a week now. Monday, November 2: Nick D'Errico, a USA Hockey Gold-certified goaltending coach and the owner of D'Crease Goaltending, on PointShot, the marketplace built by coaches where parents book a vetted coach by the session, the film review or the development plan, with a special section on Nick's goalie drill library.

Know an operator, founder or coach we should feature? Just hit reply.