High Schoolers Revolutionize Pickup Sports with Mobile App

High school seniors Kyle Beerbower, Kenneth Duran, Victor Carolino, and Andrew Politz—all from Los Angeles, California—are one of this year's competitors in the i.Invest National Youth Business Competition. They are the co-founders of RunItBack, a mobile app that gives every athlete the opportunity to play a recreational sport in an organized environment.

We spoke with the team to learn more about their business venture:

Tell us about your startup:

Our product, RunItBack, is a mobile app with a core function of organizing and mapping recreational sports games while also allowing users to participate in our community of athletes through our engaging features. The interactive map plots nearby available courts and allows players to choose a location, schedule or join a game, and post it on the map for others in the area to see and join. It also verifies suitable playing locations and allows them to compare different locations through star ratings and reviews from users. Users can view available courts with typically no wait and ongoing games in the area on our “Nearby” tab and can look at prearranged games, the weekly matchups for community-based leagues, and local tournaments on our “Scheduled” tab. After games are played, players input the results, rate each other, and vote on the game’s MVP. That data is then transferred and factored into game records, player “star ratings,” and local leaderboard rankings, which—in addition to our customizable user profiles, player highlights, the ability to make friends and form “squads,” and a multitude of prizes available to users—combine to create an inclusive, engaged community of athletes nationwide.

Who or what inspired you to start RunItBack?

The idea for RunItBack was born when we were unable to find an open court to simply shoot some hoops. We looked further into the issue and, with the help of Forbes’ article about sports inequity, discovered many shocking truths about the sports world that prompted us to devise solutions for the ongoing issues and to turn one of those ideas—RunItBack—into a reality.

How will RunItBack impact the world?

With the help of our technology, we seek to challenge outdated traditional standards and reinvent how sports are played for the better. Our product plans to address three main societal problems: sports inequity driven by the inaccessibility of sports for lower socioeconomic classes, the continuing decrease of overall sports participation, and the subtle replacement of physical activities with digital interaction. We will directly combat these issues by offering a free-to-use, accessible, universally available medium on which to play sports and reinvesting 10% of our profits to charities that work to eliminate sports inequity and empower marginalized youth. We also seek to incentivize our users to stay active and play sports through our prizes and competitive environment with one’s friends and local community that encourages consistent and habitual participation in recreational sports.

What are the next steps?

We are currently in the process of developing a user interface design and utilizing source code to develop the infrastructure of our app. We are also exploring crowdfunding options on Kickstarter and Indiegogo to assist with our initial expenses, including the marketing costs for our launch campaign, AWS cloud hosting service costs, and LLC filing and insurance costs.

In the meantime, we are ameliorating often neglected but vital aspects of our app. We are in the process of creating an introduction video for our app and a short film, and we are launching a giveaway soon to establish our social media presence. We are also constantly expanding our skill sets in the coding, marketing, and financial fields to ensure that we can create and launch the app in a smooth and straightforward manner. We have a long and difficult road ahead of us, but we are confident in our ability to ultimately fulfill our aspirations of becoming the future of pickup sports.

Learn more about the app at www.runitbackapp.com.

To mentor or offer support, email info@i-investcompetition.com.