FantasyBall story and the upwards of 5 figures deal

Interview with Michael Nkereuwem

Author

Lucas Fux
August 02, 2023

Today’s newsletter I will share:

  • A Bootstrapping Story and the 5 figures deal selling the company

  • A list of questions to ask yourself as an entrepreneur

  • 2 articles of the week on the indie business world

  • A solopreneur story making $2.5 M/Year with a Fitness App

Let’s see:

Now, let’s see the interview with a successful entrepreneur:

Interview with Michael Nkereuwem

Michael Nkereuwem is the founder of FantasyBall, Advanced Sports Analytics assisted by AI. Here Michael shares the FantasyBall story with us and his pat to sell the company upwards of 5 figures.

I hope you enjoy it.

Hi, Michael! Tell us, Who are you and what are you working on? Which is your business?

Hey, I’m Michael Nkereuwem, professionally, my role is Product Manager, but over the years I’ve developed a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and I consider myself a Tech Entrepreneur these days. I developed FantasyBall.io and recently sold the company.

What's your story and how did you come up with the idea of starting your business?

I’ve had an entrepreneurial spirit since young, around 11 years old I began developing and flipping websites and domain names. Soon I transitioned into running my own eBay shop. I would purchase wholesale government lots and sell the individual items on my eBay store for a profit. This was all between the ages of 11-15.

In more recent years I began an Audio Transcription service company that helped fund my lifestyle while studying Emerging Technology at Columbia University.

I came up with the idea for FanasyBall after working as a Product Manager in the FinTech space. I learned about the importance of data and data visualization at Columbia and was able to practically apply what I learned in the Fintech industry.

All of this experience, combined with my love of Sports resulted in the creation of FantasyBall.

How did you go from idea to product? How did you build it?

Basically, the idea was to provide unique data with visually appealing UX/UI. The first thing I did was hire a Product Manager, and then he subsequently resided over 1 Front-end and 1 Back-end engineer. We worked through the designs first, found a proper API and licensed it, and slowly worked through the documentation found in the API and instructed my employees on which data needed to be displayed, define the logic behind the data, and then visualized the data.

Which are your marketing strategies to grow your business?

The majority of my marketing came through Twitter and Google. We had heavy interest when trying to beta test the technology, and that lead to our first few users. We kept optimizing through organic and influencer Twitter ads and also dabbled with Google search ads.

Do you work alone or do you have employees?

3 core Employees and 2 outside Consultants.

How are you doing today and what are your goals for the future?

I’m doing good. It feels great to get that first exit under your belt. Now I’m ready to just scale this process and do it 10x bigger the next time. I feel like I’ve proven myself to a certain degree and moving forward it’s going to be all about scaling up operations, building great products, and doubling down on sale funnels that we know are proven.

Since starting your journey as an entrepreneur, what have been your main lessons?

You are constantly putting out fires and you learn something new every day. You have to be able to adjust and continuously find new ways to advance the company, even when your original plans may fall through. There’s always another move to be made.

What were the biggest challenges you faced?

The biggest challenge was probably marketing, if we had figured that out a little better I think we could have scaled further.

If you had the chance of doing only one thing differently, what would it be?

I would have used a more cost-effective API to bring down expenses and increase margins.

What advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are just starting?

Just do it. Does not matter how you start, just start. Don’t think and plan yourself to death. Entrepreneurship favors the fearless Do-ers.

What tools and resources do you recommend?

I recommend getting your Twitter feed optimized to the point where you’re receiving great advice from other Founders, VCs, Businessmen, etc constantly. Having a feed full of people doing exactly what you want to do will give you new ideas and ways to improve daily.

Where can we go to learn more about you and your work?

You can follow me on Twitter as @IvyTechMike

I hope this has been useful for you. You can follow me on Twitter as @fintiux

I appreciate all the feedback, feel free to answer this email with your ideas.