Highlight — 2016 to 2017
Co-founder and CTO of a search engine and comparison portal for sports and fitness products, from the architecture of the first version to the launch in February 2017.
In the press
“Michael is responsible for web development as CTO and brings two decades of experience to the team. … He leads the development and programming of the website.”
Original: „Michael ist als CTO für das Web Development zuständig und bringt hier zwei Jahrzehnte Erfahrung ins Team. … übernimmt er den Lead bei der Entwicklung und Programmierung der Website.“
Sportiply launch press release, 1 February 2017 · my translation
What it was
Sportiply aggregated the offers of many online shops from the sports sector, so athletes and fitness fans could compare products and prices in one place instead of searching shop by shop. The name combines “sporty” and “supply”. Revenue was to come from affiliate commissions, and the Munich investment company Cali Ventures backed the team financially.
I co-founded it with Björn Jansen, the founder and managing director, whose own search for the right basketball shoes across countless shops started the idea. Björn was looking for a technical co-founder, and Désha Nujsongsinn, the team’s art director, put us in touch. Go check Désha out - he's awesome!
What I built
I architected and shipped the first version of the platform as a hybrid of a Django CMS for content and the Oscar e-commerce framework for the product catalog.
The catalog was fed by semi-automated product imports from the partner shops.
Sportiply went online on 1 February 2017 with about 500,000 items from 15 selected online shops. The offering was to be expanded massively in the following months.
After the first version was out, I sold the rights to the code to sportiply and refocused on my IT consultancy.
What happened next
After I had left, according to the company’s press release, a new version of the website went online on 15 December 2017, with more than 50 shops including big partners like Adidas, Asics, MyProtein and Under Armour, and a weekly online magazine with athlete interviews. The team announced a stand at the ISPO trade fair in Munich in January 2018 and a place among the finalists in the digital category of a worldwide young entrepreneur competition in sports.
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