DC Startup Profile: Next Game Because Nothing Is More Social Than Sports (Rawporter Roadshow)

We’re in the midst of the Rawporter Roadshow visiting with startups and checking out tech everywhere. While in DC we stopped at the Fort accelerator where we met with Next Game. NextGame thrives off the fact that nothing is more social than pick up sports. With Spring in full swing millions of people will be flocking to the local park, open fields, and gyms to participate in pickup sports and other activities, this is where Next Game fits in.

When you’re in grade school, high school and even college sports are a way of life for most people. They’re also a given all school levels have sanctioned sports, intramural sports and pick up games. When you’re living on a college campus you can look at your dorm room window and find a soccer game, frisbee golf, hacky sack, pickup basketball and more. Once you get out of college the drive and want to participate in pickup sports is still there but finding pick up sports or men’s or women’s leagues is for lack of a better word, a pain in the ass.

Often times, unless it’s a real established adult league, participating in sports is contingent on organization and follow through and no one seems to communicate well. NextGame handles that for you.

More with video after the break


NextGame is a platform that allows people to connect socially to organize pick up sports, and recreational activities no matter how big or small. Age doesn’t matter either. If you want to organize a 4 on 4 soccer game or a rollerblading excursion NextGame at nextgamenation.com allows you to do that. It also makes it a snap to set up repeating games and events.

NextGame is like an Eventbrite, group meetup application for those who want to participate in sports. The platform has great benefits too, with NextGame you can say that you’re organizing a pickup baseball game but you really are doing it just for fun and aren’t the greatest, that way you’re not stuck riding the pine at your own game.

Co-Founders Tareq Tahboub and Andrew Chang started NextGame really out of necessity. They met while attending college and realized how easy and fun it was to hit the field for a couple of hours of soccer after class on Friday. Once they got out of college it wasn’t so easy. After working “career” jobs, Tahboub in network security and Chang in finance, the casual athlete in them wanted to play, so they left their jobs and started NextGame.

In our interview with Tahboub he points out that NextGame is also great for people who relocate. Maybe you had a standing pick up basketball game in your old hometown, NextGame can help you find that game again.

NextGame is part of the Fort accelerator in Washington DC where they are focusing on growth, product and building scale, but Chang is not naive when it comes to a startup and what he calls “east coast mentality”.

Chang told nibletz.com that while many startups on the west coast have the “if you build it they will come mentality” so build scale monetize later, Chang realizes that there has to be revenue to show for that next round of funding or a possible exit down the road. Both Chang and Tahboub are working diligently on finding the exact way to monetize NextGame.  They both think that there are several different ways to monetize NextGame and that’s in the cards for the very near future.

If it’s nice outside, go ahead organize an old-fashioned game of stickball at Nextgamenation.com