In 2018, a Copenhagen City Heart Study was published via the Mayo Clinic which found that playing tennis added 9.7 years to people’s lives. The contributing factors were not just benefits gained from physical activity, but also from the social relationships formed by being part of a tennis community.
Given all this, I was super intrigued to speak with founder Mark Pesahovich in our latest release of ‘start-up stories’ to hear how he’s looking to re-invent recreational tennis with a community-based platform named Tenni. We hope you enjoy the highlights from our conversation:
What’s your origin story?
MP: I’ve been playing tennis for almost 30 years, starting when I was a student. In tennis, it is common to play with one or two tennis partners or play partners, but finding new people to play with can be challenging. Over the past six years, I’ve relocated three times, and each time I had to pause my tennis activities for extended periods due to the fragmented tennis ecosystem. Our journey began last year, after my most recent relocation, when I was struggling to find a local tennis infrastructure, including courts and play partners once again. I started to research this issue and discovered a widespread common frustration among players all over the world. This sparked an idea for a dedicated platform that could streamline and modernize the tennis experience, similar to what Strava does for runners.
Who can benefit most from Tenni?
MP: We’re focused on anyone that is an active tennis player comfortable using their mobile device to find tennis partners while being open to elevate their experience and improve their game. This audience not only loves the sport but also the relationships and social connections that come with it.
Describe your brand’s soul?
MP: Our purpose is to bring people closer together from around the world and unite a vibrant, inclusive global community to make tennis more accessible for players of all ages.
What’s one word to capture your brand?
What is Tenni?
MP: Tenni aims to democratize and modernize the tennis experience for players and fans, while providing brands a unique channel to engage with their audiences. I didn't come from the world of sports so as we began, I researched the trends quite a bit. What I discovered was that there’s a strong desire for engagement across almost every B2C solution. Unfortunately, that element has really been left behind in sports solutions. At least until recently, now people have begun to realize how technology can add value for consumers and businesses.
And that’s where Tenni comes in to deliver a B2B2C solution. On one hand it gives tennis players immediate value. While on the business side it gives brands an exclusive gateway to a focused audience organized around a fan engagement solution. There are literally millions of people spending a ton of hours on the tennis court where brands cannot reach them. We can help bridge that gap through a player’s mobile device with digital assets and gamification. For example, we’re building a “phygital” experience, we monitor physical activities through a smartwatch where a player could then receive game points based on their mechanics and from the data collected in their digital rackets. We also plan to make customizable avatars where someone can change hair color, outfits, etc. which allows brands the opportunity to play in the digital wearable space, that is extremely popular with Gen Z.
Tenni serves as that hub for real-life tennis communities, connecting them around their mutual passion, helping them achieve their goals, and boosting their overall experience.
One of the drivers that will make this app a global success is grounding it in the tennis community. We are focused on building the technology because there are already so many communities all over the world that exist and are already playing with a hyper-local community of friends. Thus, we don't need to focus our resources on building communities from scratch, we just need to empower them with a compelling tool. Tenni serves as that hub for real-life tennis communities, connecting them around their mutual passion, helping them achieve their goals, and boosting their overall experience. You can create your team inside the app and then be able to compete across communities. We're also developing our own rating system based on match results, which will help us bring tennis partners together based on analytics from each player’s game. As for tennis instructors, they’ll be able to create their own academy with virtual tournaments and remote coaching.
Why is Tenni Unique?
we’re creating more levels of engagement and gamification… being community-driven and completely free for users.
MP: When we were just getting started, I did some competitive research and while several solutions already exist, they all share some gaps in common: One, they’re all very local. Second, everything in the market today is outdated, kind of boring and the technology is very basic. Which has led to low value experience with little appeal for younger generations. I questioned how we can modernize it? How can we make it global? How can we bring some kind of fun and engagement to it? That’s why with Tenni we’re focused on doing several things differently: First, we built a set of core features including virtual team creation, rating-based matchmaking, and local tournament creation, while on top of it we’ve built layers of gamification, and engagement. Second, we're focused on being completely community-driven with user generated content. Third, we aim to be completely free - generating money mostly from brands, not users. Competitor mobile apps are expensive, costing between $100 - $150 per year for a subscription, which for a younger person can be a significant amount of their personal budget.
Advice for other start-ups?
MP: It's not the first time that I'm working in a startup, but it’s the first time that I'm leading one. There are a lot of scary places, there are some things that you won't know and won’t be familiar. You must be willing to learn and dive deep, no one is going to do that for you. As the saying goes: “The eyes scare but the hands keep working.” You don’t need to go from A to Z in one day.
Just don't give up, persistence is the key, without it, many of today’s great companies wouldn't be here.
What’s Next?
MP: We're planning to release our public MVP, which we’ll be embarrassed of, but if you're not embarrassed of your first release you're probably too late right? Our extended, bigger vision is to become a multi-sport companion app. With plans to extend beyond tennis to pickleball and padel and eventually on to street basketball and golf. From a capabilities perspective, we plan to add advanced AI Tools like AI ratings, partner matching, AI coaching and things like digital collectibles. Other functionality were exploring is for user generated video capture and publishing – for example think of sports like pick-up basketball, where those waiting on the next game could be filming and posting on behalf of the community.
After learning more about about Tenni, it’s easy to be enthusiastic about the potential and the impact this solution can have on the tennis world. And with the technology and business team in place, there’s no doubt this platform is well positioned to gain traction in the market. If you’d like to continue following the Tenni roll-out this year you can sign-up for e-mail updates by clicking "join" at Tenni's website.
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