Founder, Ryan Batchelor, has made strides in the cheer and dance competition registration market with his startup and passion-project, 8 Count.

The startup - launched with Million  Labs - is the first software product built for the cheer industry specifically to manage registrations, invoicing and judging.

Ryan’s significantly improved the user experience in this space. His goal is to be the sole registration platform for cheer and dance competitions within the next 3 years. 

Here’s Ryan on his no-code journey. 

Capitalising on the market

I do the registration side of events on my side - which gets around 350 million registrations a year. I’m capitalising on this market by servicing these registrations. How it works depends on the user. 

Event producers can create an event, note what their pricing is, and then publish it. The event producer would, closer to time, create a schedule that cross references names, and puts teams in an order that allows athletes to take a rest before they have to do another competition. They also create score sheets for the judge to fill out, and publish the results once they’re finished. 

The other users are programme directors who interact with and register for those events. So when an athlete comes through the door, their parent or guardian would provide the athlete’s details and create a user profile, where everything would be managed in one place. The parent can then select which events their kids take part in, assign them to a team and hand the rest over to the event producer. 

I initially tasked another organisation to help me develop my offering. But after 3 months I realised they weren’t building it in the right way. So I brought in Million Labs as a fix for this. 

The developers I worked with were fantastic. Collectively they helped me fix all the things that weren’t responsive, and got everything working as it should. 

Evolving my product

As it stands I have 3 customers. By 1 October I should have an additional 5 that sign on. 3 of these will help me to get significantly more customers. If everything goes to plan by April next year I’ll have 35 customers out of the 50 in the market. 

As the product evolves, we're also going to be taking on gym management. That includes being able to schedule classes and run everything that has to do with cheerleading inside of the app. And then we're building another module that will run payroll for coaches. So once they’re able to schedule the class and assign the coach, then they can automate the payroll. 

NoCode is awesome and easy to build 

I’ve learned a lot doing this project. On reflection, I wish I’d put more time into the wireframe and building out the flow. I didn’t spend enough time doing this and put too much trust in the developers I was using before Million Labs.

I truly believe no-code platforms are awesome and easy to build, especially if you have no experience with programming and app building. Give it a go! 

Launch faster and better with Million Labs

You don’t need to use code to launch a startup. There are better ways to do it, and we can help. Join the no-code revolution by working with us! 

Find out how we can help you go to market quicker, make money faster, and increase your chances of success. Join our Startup Lab or launch your startup with the Bubble app.