The Idea
CEO Erik Beimfohr has a big sports background, which led him to an idea within the fantasy sports industry--a market with over 60 million people and growing. The idea was somewhat of a hybrid of the long draft season, and the daily player trading formats that currently exist. Erik set forth to create a company based on this idea.
The Challenge
Erik found kohactive after reaching out to 10 or so different development firms. He said he chose kohactive because he liked the firm’s proposal process--the custom format and information showed Erik that the team at kohactive had spent time talking about the project, and the company they were potentially being hired to build.
After Erik chose kohactive, the team set to work on Customer Development. Through this process, they uncovered a much larger need in the market--a messaging app for fantasy sports players. After discussing the possibilities, Erik and kohactive decided to build an MVP of the sports messaging app.
Core Requirements
- Logo and Branding
- Real-time messaging capabilities
- Private user to user messaging
- Twitter integration for real-time updates
- RSS and Publication real-time integrations
- Public & Private league implementations
The MVP
Before building a huge product with a lot of functionality, the kohactive team worked with Erik to drill down into the core functions of the site in its first iteration. This saved Erik a lot of money--rather than trying to create a new type of fantasy sports application, which was a larger risk, had higher costs, and was confirmed by fewer people as a need in the market.
In the MVP stage, the team worked together to determine what functionality would make it into this stage, which they called “the tailgate.” kohactive used open source chat software, and then worked together to prove the need for additional features before they were built.
Evolution of a Product
The current iteration of Slurv is a fully-integrated messaging app for the fantasy sports world. The company is in the proof of concept phase--with the ongoing help of kohactive. The product is now available on the public platform, but has also been built out as a white-label solution, which is integrated into existing fantasy sports platforms. This new integration is potentially game-changing for Slurv’s customer acquisition and growth strategy.
I really just consider them a part of our team--I don’t consider them contractors or someone who does our work. I don’t consider changing that anytime in the near future at all. We’re one big team that makes up Slurv.
The Product
Built for simplicity and ease of use, the highly functional Slurv app enables fantasy players to easily communicate with one another rather than turning to traditional forms of communication, such as text or email.
Threads
Threads are a place to have an open conversation. Threads can be created for a sport, a team or any topic you want to discuss. Threads are completely public to all league members.
Private Threads
Want to talk trash in private? Private threads are invite only and allow users to use all of the same tools but without the public openness.
Private Messages
Want to have a one-on-on conversation? All league members can have private conversations with all the functionality of Slurv.
Power up with Integrations
Connect all of your favorite feeds to get real-time udpates. Slurv allows users to subscribe to popular blogs, RSS feeds and Twitter users. Whenever something happens, you'll get instant notifications to keep fantasy players alert and informed.
A Multi-Tenant System
The Tailgate
The Tailgate is a completely public league that any user can join. The tailgate is great for meeting new people, talking smack and discussing sports. It's completely free and includes all of the same functionality, including Threads, Private Threads, Private Messages and Integrations.
Private Leagues
Users can create private leagues and invite their friends and fantasy teams. Private leagues are invite only and have all of Slurv's core functionality, including Threads, Private Threads, Private Messages and Integrations.