Help me validate my idea/project. Would you be interested in this?

Hi guys,

Firstly, a little info about me. I’m 29 years old and currently own and operate a family business in the beauty distribution sector in Canada. One of my biggest passions in life has been Poker. I have been playing for about 12 years. I played semi-professionally for about 5 years, and helped organize underground poker games.

Why?

A couple of months ago, I helped my friend organize a poker tournament for a local charity. We were told that 120 players were expected. Only 26 people showed up. The reason was they never actually marketed the tournament, and no one knew about it. They were reminded months in advance to announce the tournament, but never got to it, or didn’t know how. We eventually had to cut our pay in half because we felt bad making a charity actually lose money. On the way back home I was thinking about making a website and market the tournaments myself, but I never got to it. A couple of months later, I was watching a Quebec version of Shark Tank, and someone pitched a web platform to help manage hockey leagues and tournaments. That’s where my idea clicked.

What?

So basically, I want to make a SaaS, in the form of a freemium, for the poker community. Here is a rough summary of the main features.

• League creator and manager • Search local games • Integrated multi-platform tournament director • Social media features

What I’ve done so far As of yet, I established a pretty solid business plan (I think), created the mock-ups, and built a landing page. I am awaiting a proper validation to get them professionally designed and make the landing page public.

What I need for it to succeed

• Obviously I need validation
• Since I am not a coding expert and that I am currently bootstrapping, I will need to find a developing partner (ideally in Montreal), if not, I have possible investors I can propose my project to
• I will also probably try a Kickstarter Campaign.

Why Now? Why Me?

I think now is the best time to launch this start-up. Since online poker popularity is decreasing, mainly due to regulations in the United States, live poker has known an increase in the past years. Live poker will always be at the core of the poker community. Currently, nothing of this quality is offered to the community. You have PokerDIY which seems to have been abandoned, and seriously lacks design and quality features. You also have Tournament Director, which does the job as a software, but looks outdated, and isn’t web enabled. Since I have some pretty good business knowledge and I understand every facet of the poker community, I think I am the perfect person to make this available. I also have many important contacts in the poker community, including pros, WSOP champions and tournament directors and successful poker club owners.

Anyway, thank you for reading this long post. Any feedback (good or bad) would be greatly appreciated. I would like to know if this is something people would be interested in, and if they would be willing to pay a small fee to get my product.

Thank you!

PS: If my idea were to be validated, I will make a new post explaining step by step the process of building this new venture.