Why I keep building in sectors nobody finds sexy

Nobody has ever raised a round to collect fees from a youth football club.

I checked. Well, I didn't. But I'm fairly confident.

That's one of the reasons I like it.

Where our products actually come from

Look at what we build. PagoCRM collects fees for sports clubs. Foxnice Booking takes reservations for accommodation. Foxnice Restaurant is for, well, restaurants.

None of that will get you on a startup podcast.

And none of it came from a brainstorm. It came from clients. In 2020, during the pandemic, a lot of our work was with rural tourism businesses and our first fee collections for clubs. In 2021 we built a booking engine and more clubs started collecting through us. The products are what happens when you see the same problem enough times that solving it once more by hand starts to feel silly.

That's my favourite kind of idea. The kind you don't have. The kind your clients keep handing you until you finally take it.

The best product ideas I've had weren't ideas. They were the same complaint, heard often enough.

Why "boring" is a compliment

I think there are a few things that make an unsexy sector a good place for a small company.

The problems are real. A club treasurer chasing monthly fees isn't a hypothetical persona from a pitch deck. It's a person with a spreadsheet and a patience that's running out.

The competition is thinner than you'd expect. Big players chase big markets. A niche of clubs that charge monthly fees doesn't look like much from a venture fund's office. From ours, it looks like plenty.

And the customers don't want novelty. They want things to work. That fits us. We've spent years learning that good maintenance is the kind nobody notices. A product for a club should be the same: quiet, reliable, forgotten until it's needed.

What it costs

I'm not going to pretend it's all upside.

Boring sectors are harder to explain. When you tell someone you build fee-collection software for clubs, their face does a little thing. I've learned to live with the little thing.

They're also slower. Clubs, rural lodgings and restaurants don't change tools every quarter. That's great once they're with you. It's frustrating while you're trying to get them there.

And there's no glamour to hide behind. No funding announcement, no team photo with confetti. Just a product that works, paid for by client work, growing at the speed the customers allow.

Which, honestly, is the speed I'd choose anyway.

Freedom likes small markets

There's a link here with how we run the company. We don't want to be the biggest. We want to stay free, and in my experience those two goals rarely fit in the same company.

A small, unsexy market is a natural ally of that. Nobody is going to pour millions into out-shouting us there. Nobody is in a rush. We can be slow, careful and occasionally wrong without having to explain ourselves to anyone.

So yes, I'll keep building for clubs, lodgings and restaurants.

Not because they're exciting.

Because they pay, they stay, and they never ask me what my exit strategy is.

P.S. My exit strategy, for the record, is the door. Usually around seven.