Business Plan
All financial figures in this plan are illustrative assumptions for planning purposes, not forecasts. They are intended to be internally consistent and to be replaced with real data as pilots mature.
1. Executive Summary
RL Padel Academy is a mobile-first, white-label padel-club management platform. Born as a production app for a single academy — a native iOS app (Expo SDK 56, iOS 26 Liquid Glass UI) backed by PocketBase and a Next.js admin — it bundles court reservations, trainings and enrolment, events and tournaments, an academy shop, photo gallery, socials, and member billing into one branded experience.
We turn that product into a white-label SaaS sold to padel clubs across the Netherlands and EU. Each club gets its own branded app (colours, logo, name, feature set) without building anything in-house. Pricing is anchored at ~€1 per active member per month, a number small enough for any club to approve and large enough to compound: a 400-member club pays roughly €400/month, while our marginal backend cost per club is single-digit euros. The model is high-margin, sticky (member data and billing live in the app), and scalable on cheap infrastructure.
2. Market
Padel is the fastest-growing racket sport in Europe. The Netherlands has gone from a handful of courts in the late 2010s to a dense national network of clubs, and growth continues across Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, and the Nordics. Most clubs run on a patchwork of WhatsApp groups for communication and Playtomic for court booking — there is a real digitization gap: no branded member app, no integrated billing, no events/trainings management, no engagement layer.
Market sizing (stated assumptions, illustrative):
| Tier | Definition | Assumption | Clubs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TAM | All padel clubs in EU | ~12,000 clubs EU-wide | 12,000 | Avg 250 active members/club |
| SAM | Clubs in our beachhead markets (NL + BE + DE) that want a branded member app | ~20% of EU clubs, ~40% digitization-willing | ~960 | Reachable via federations/chains |
| SOM | Realistically winnable in 3 years | ~15–20% of SAM | ~150–200 | Driven by referrals + reference clubs |
At an assumed €1/active member/month and ~250 active members/club, each club is worth ~€250 MRR / €3,000 ARR. A SOM of 150 clubs implies roughly €450k ARR; the full SAM would approach €2.9M ARR — a credible niche-vertical SaaS, not a unicorn, but a strong cash-generative business for a lean team.
3. Product & Value Proposition
We sell clubs an outcome: a professional, branded member app in days, not quarters.
- Branded club app — native iOS look, the club’s colours/logo/name.
- Member engagement — news, socials, photo gallery, push notifications.
- Bookings — Playtomic-style court reservations integrated with trainings and trainer availability.
- Billing — member invoices and in-app payments, replacing manual bank transfers.
- Retention — the app becomes the club’s home, increasing stickiness and reducing churn of members.
| Alternative | Cost | Time | Branding | Billing/members |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build in-house | €80k–200k+ dev | 6–12 months | Full | Build yourself |
| Playtomic only | Low | Instant | None (Playtomic brand) | Bookings only |
| RL Padel white-label | ~€1/member/mo | Days | Full club brand | Built-in |
The wedge against Playtomic: clubs keep Playtomic for the cross-club booking marketplace if they like it, while we own the branded member relationship, engagement, and billing Playtomic does not provide.
4. Pricing & Packaging
Core meter: €1 per active member per month, layered on a small per-club platform fee and optional transaction fees.
| Tier | Platform fee / club / mo | Per active member / mo | Setup fee | Payments fee | Included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | €0 | €1.00 | €0 | 2.5% | Runtime-branded app, bookings, trainings, news |
| Pro | €49 | €1.00 | €199 | 1.9% | Own App Store app, shop, billing, gallery, priority support |
| Enterprise | €199 | €0.80 (volume) | €499 | negotiated | Isolated PocketBase instance, SLA, custom integrations |
Worked example — a 400-member club on Pro:
| Component | Calculation | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | flat | €49 |
| Per-member | 400 × €1.00 | €400 |
| Subtotal (recurring) | €449 | |
| Setup (one-time) | €199 | |
| Shop/payment fees | 1.9% of in-app GMV (variable) | variable |
That is ~€5,400/year from one mid-size club, against a backend cost of a few euros per month.
5. Revenue Model & Projections
Assumptions (illustrative): avg 250 active members/club; blended ~€1.05/member/mo including platform fee; annual logo churn 10%; pricing held flat.
| Metric | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clubs (end of year) | 10 | 50 | 180 |
| Avg active members / club | 220 | 240 | 250 |
| Blended €/member/mo | €1.05 | €1.05 | €1.05 |
| MRR (end of year) | ~€2,310 | ~€12,600 | ~€47,250 |
| ARR (end of year) | ~€28k | ~€151k | ~€567k |
| Annual logo churn | 10% | 10% | 10% |
Year 1 is a pilot phase (a handful of reference clubs incl. the RL Academy itself). Year 2 proves repeatability via federations and referrals. Year 3 scales into the SOM.
Unit economics (illustrative):
| Metric | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| ARPA (per club / mo) | ~€260 | 250 members × €1.05 |
| Backend hosting / club / mo | €2–5 | PocketBase on Fly (shared) |
| Gross margin | ~90%+ | Hosting + payment fees are the only COGS |
| CAC (per club) | ~€600 | Mostly founder sales + referral incentive |
| Payback | ~2.5 months | CAC / ARPA |
| Avg club lifetime | 10 years | At 10% churn |
| LTV | ~€31k | ARPA × 12 × lifetime × margin |
| LTV : CAC | ~50:1 | Strong; reflects low CAC at niche scale |
The economics are dominated by the fact that hosting is nearly free — PocketBase is a single Go binary on a small Fly machine, and even per-club isolated instances cost only a few euros per month.
6. Costs
| Category | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Development | €40k | €70k | €120k | 1 → 2 engineers (founder + hire) |
| Hosting (Fly/PocketBase) | €0.5k | €2k | €8k | €2–5/club/mo shared; more for isolated |
| Support | €5k | €15k | €40k | Part-time → 1 CS hire |
| Apple/Google fees | €0.2k | €0.6k | €2k | $99/yr per dev account + per-club where applicable |
| Sales & marketing | €5k | €20k | €50k | Referral incentives, federation sponsorships, content |
| Total | ~€51k | ~€108k | ~€220k | Lean; founder-led |
Against Year 3 ARR (~€567k) this implies a path to profitability within the projection window, even before optimisation.
7. Go-to-Market
- Reference club first. The live RL Padel Academy app is the demo — a real, native, branded app, not a mock-up.
- Club federations & associations. Partner with national/regional padel and tennis-padel federations for endorsement and member-club distribution.
- Padel facility chains. Multi-venue operators are high-leverage: one deal, many clubs.
- Referral motion. Every owner (“eigenaar”) who refers another club earns account credit; clubs trust peers.
- Sales motion. Low-touch, founder-led: 20-minute demo on the owner’s own phone → free 30-day pilot (runtime-branded app) → convert to paid, optionally upsell to a dedicated App Store build.
8. Competition
| Competitor | Strength | Gap we exploit |
|---|---|---|
| Playtomic | Dominant booking marketplace, cross-club discovery | Not a branded club app; no member billing, weak engagement layer — coopetition possible |
| Matchi | Booking + club tools, tennis heritage | Generic UI, limited native branded mobile presence |
| Generic club apps | Cheap, multi-sport | Not padel-native; poor UX; no Liquid Glass-grade polish |
Differentiation: a genuinely native, branded, white-label member app with integrated billing and a premium iOS feel — not a web wrapper, not a shared-brand marketplace.
9. Risks & Mitigations
| Risk | Impact | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Apple/Google platform dependence | App rejection / policy changes | Offer runtime-branded single app + web fallback for admin; keep payment flows compliant; PWA option |
| Playtomic coopetition / competition | They add member apps | Position as complementary (keep Playtomic booking); win on branding + billing; move fast on the niche |
| Churn | Erodes ARR | High switching cost once billing + member data live in app; annual contracts on Pro/Enterprise |
| Single-developer / key-person risk | Delivery & support bottleneck | Document architecture (these docs), automate deploys, hire engineer #2 by Year 2 |
| Slow club digitization | Longer sales cycles | Free pilots, federation endorsement, reference-club proof |
10. Roadmap & Milestones
| Phase | Target | Milestone |
|---|---|---|
| Pilot (Q1–Q2) | RL Academy + 2–3 design partners | Multi-tenant clubs model live; runtime branding + feature flags shipped |
| 10 clubs (Y1) | First paying cohort | Self-serve admin onboarding; in-app billing; EAS per-club build pipeline |
| 100 clubs (Y2–Y3) | Repeatable funnel | Federation partnerships; payments/shop GMV; engineer #2 + CS hire |
| Scale (Y3+) | Toward SOM (~180 clubs) | Enterprise isolated instances; expand NL → BE/DE |
Funding: the plan is designed to be bootstrappable — low CAC, ~90% gross margin, and trivial hosting costs mean revenue can fund growth. A small seed round (€150–250k) would only be needed to accelerate hiring and federation/marketing spend in Year 2; it is optional, not required, to reach profitability.