Ever tried to organize a tennis team with endless texts and emails? 😵 It’s time for a smarter solution! Listen to our chat with Mike Carter and learn about the future of tennis coordination! Your sanity will thank you!
To learn more or download Double Match Point (“DMP”) you can click on the links below:
Here’s a complete transcript of our conversation with Mike Carter
Carolyn: 0:08
Hi, this is Carolyn, and I’m here with Erin, and we’re excited to have Mike Carter on the podcast. Mike created an app called Double Match Point to help rec players. Mike plays at the 4-5 and 5-0 level and has played rec tennis in Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Florida and even England. He has captained multiple teams and has won state championships in singles, doubles and mixed and won sectionals with his 8-5 combo team. He also plays in tournaments and he comes from a tennis family. Both his mom and dad play tennis, so he’s good, right, Erin.Erin: 0:37
Right, I was going to say 4-5-5-0,. Yeah, that’s above our pay grade.Carolyn: 0:42
Right right, winning 85 combo is not me. So, mike, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, and can you start off and tell us what inspired you to create double match point?Mike: 0:53
Yeah, absolutely so. You know a lot of this had to do with my move to North Carolina. So when I first got to the Durham area I was sort of recovering from a knee injury and I decided, hey, why don’t I play some tennis? You know, it’s not as contact as soccer, which is where I originally injured my knee, and I ended up playing, you know, a bunch of tennis at Garrett Road, if everyone’s familiar with that place in Durham, and I was recruited by a captain there to play team tennis and eventually that led to me captaining teams, you know, because it’s such a huge community in the research triangle.Mike: 1:30
And as I was captaining teams I just discovered, you know, having a background that’s really focused on the Internet space and products in the Internet space the tennis was really not digitized. Yet I found it really frustrating to sort of captain a team really not digitized. Yet I found it really frustrating to sort of captain a team. There’s a lot of back and forth, a lot of email, a lot of texting, a lot of keeping track of things, and you know that light bulb sort of went on and I thought, no, there might be an opportunity here to make this sort of more digitized, have a product that could actually work for tennis players and that really was sort of the light bulb moment, for DMP works for tennis players and that really was sort of the light bulb moment for DNP.Erin: 2:10
I’m giggling because I know a lady who actually does her entire tennis calendar on her paper calendar and we we have tried to steal her paper calendar and get her digitized. But you’re right, there are. I’ve captained a bunch but, as our listeners know, carolyn does not captain because she’s smart, because there’s because there’s so much to do. Right, mike? It’s, it’s everything you talked about it’s lineups and it’s communicating with your team and it’s changing of lineups and communicating with other captains and and knowing your schedules and all that good stuff. So can you give us a little bit more about, like, what’s in the app for, maybe specifically captains? But certainly you know our audience is rec players in general, so maybe what would help a rec player?Mike: 2:55
Sure, absolutely so. You know, a lot of the feature set was born from when we worked with USTA in North Carolina. So somehow they found out we were building this platform for teams and this was during COVID. We ended up running our platform with a bunch of folks in North Carolina it’s going back two and a half years now where we put everyone into the app and digitized the lineup exchange process and a lot of the communications between volunteers at the state tournament and the central people managing the tournament and all the players and captains, and so off the back of that experience, we started building more and more of a feature set that we thought would be focused on tennis players and specifically, league rec players. And so it’s all those little things of is there a calendar next to a chat room? Is there an easy way to give your availability? Is there a way to integrate the tech so that the tech can help people be on the same page? And what I mean by that is things like if you give your availability on Monday for a match that’s going to happen on Friday, can the system actually make sure? Hey, don’t forget. You said you were available on Friday. It is in 24 hours from now, if you have a problem, go into the chat room.Mike: 4:07
So when you look at organizing tennis through that sort of organizer lens, there’s a lot of opportunity to just solve problems, make it more efficient, to innovate, and really that is our focus. We think that a lot of the systems quote unquote that you see out there, be them websites or you know apps themselves. They sort of take it. You know some of them have taken it a little bit forward. We’re trying to be totally comprehensive, add anything that a player tells us that they want in the system. You know we get a lot of feedback from people on that front and currently, you know we have a calendar, we have lineup capability and we have an integrated robot that is doing the chasing and the reminding and that sort of thing. And you know very, very simple app as well. So you can think of it. The best way I sort of sometimes describe it is you think about WhatsApp or GroupMe, but then you add a bunch of tools that are specific to rec and league tennis.Erin: 5:06
You know what are the challenges for them.Mike: 5:08
Because those sort of tools will never come from those entities. You know they’ve got bigger fish to fry.Erin: 5:13
Right, that’s what I was going to say. So it’s probably a combo of if we were explaining it. It’s a combo of just your plain old texting group texting, right, number one is in there, and the nice thing is it doesn’t matter, probably, if you have an iPhone or a not or an Android, absolutely, because sometimes those text messages just get crazy. Just combining those two platforms, right, yeah, so, yeah, so it’s a combo of texting. It’s a combo of, like you said, lineups, which you know some. There’s several apps out there trying to do that, but yours is just all aggregated, integrated into one, I think, which is the key, right, so you could get in touch with your teammates, you could probably ask for a sub and you know, through chatting or whatever you want to do. But I can think of four different tennis apps that all do different things that yours actually all does in one apps that all do different things that yours actually all does in one.Mike: 6:11
Yeah, and it’s that level of detail. So you take, and I used to do this, and there are thousands of captains out there still using- like a Google spreadsheet.Erin: 6:15
Think of the things that you put on that Google spreadsheet. I forgot about that one, yeah.Mike: 6:19
Yeah, you put things, you put IDs in there, you track how many times has a person played, because you want to spread matches amongst people, right? So what we’ve done recently with our lineup capability is if you’re in a lineup, that counts as you being played, and so we’re counting for the captain how many times that person has played. So the next time you make a lineup it’s right there in front of you so it says oh, that person hasn’t played yet, I need to put them in. It’s the same with the rating, right, if you’re playing combo, you don’t have everyone’s rating memorized, but if it’s there in front of you when you’re making the lineup, it’s more and more information that gets rid of the spreadsheet.Mike: 6:57
So we’re trying to eliminate all these separate tools, bring all the tools in, and we even use our own chat rooms for product development. So I have a group of about 40 people that are tennis and pickleball players in a chat room giving us feedback on our product pipeline, where we’re going with this, what’s coming soon, if they’ve identified a bug. You know we are a startup. We absolutely have had things from time to time that people have pointed out to us, and that’s great. You know we don’t want them to be shy. We want them to tell us what is it you’re looking for, and so, yeah, we’re heading in that direction that’s similar to our show.Erin: 7:31
We always ask people for feedback, please, not that we run out of ideas, but people like to send in ideas of who we should interview. In fact, you’ve been very good about that, mike, and we want to thank you because you’ve been such a big supporter and constantly giving us ideas of interesting people to interview and, um, but yeah, so that I guess it’s you know, in a way it’s similar to second serves, that people are emailing us and telling us what we’ve done well and what we’ve done wrong, and who we should interview next.Mike: 8:00
Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, they’re users, right, they’re listeners. They want them to speak their mind. You don’t want them to be. You have to actually prod them. Sometimes You’re not gonna, you know, hurt anyone’s feelings. Just tell us, tell us what you think.Erin: 8:12
Right yeah exactly. So, do you have something? Do you have like a coolest feature or features that you can think of that are things that people are liking the most.Mike: 8:22
Well, I think you know, from an innovation and cool feature standpoint like I love every feature that comes out right, you know it’s sort of like your baby. You’re like, oh, we solved that problem, check that off the list, whatever it is. But from a high level, I think the robot is the most interesting thing. So we’ve called our robot she has a name Minerva the goddess of knowledge robot. She has a name Minerva the goddess of knowledge. We want her to have some sort of character within the app and when we’re talking to third parties that can provide content that the robot can then insert into the rooms at the control of the users, it just opens up a whole new realm of possibility. So I’ll give you a couple examples. Usta lead coordinators right, every season, please watch the webinar. You have to come to this meeting. Don’t forget about these rules. These rules don’t change that much, right? So we’re thinking, okay, give us like the top 10 rules that just need to be out there with the community. We’re going to load them up into our robot and identify which groups are teams and it’ll insert like a rule a week hey, don’t forget, this is how this rule works. Blah, blah, blah. Click here to learn the details, that sort of thing. Great example of how to use the interface, how to use our system to sort of spread information amongst the community. That needs to be out there, right, and automated, right. So we have a list of 10 rules. It just sprinkles them into the rooms. When it’s done, it never sends them again. You know that sort of thing.Mike: 9:51
Then we have another thing that’s coming down the pike, probably in about three months. We’re talking to some folks who are on the mental side of training. So mental preparation for tennis, right. This guy is a professor at a university. He does team sessions, he’s, you know, teaching classes on being strong mentally. We are integrating him into our app so that you can enable these tips, you know, and when I say enable, you know, under our groups you control almost everything in the app. So do I want push messages, yes or no? You know who’s waiting on the pending list to join our group? Do you want mental tips? No, check, and those messages again will start to come in and we’re going to experiment with this.Mike: 10:36
But you know, a lot of our users are like getting very excited about these types of features and there’s always people asking about gear. Can you let me know when Babelad is a sale on. You know tennis warehouse? Absolutely, because those digital systems are all set up to integrate. You know, at the end of the day, all we need to do is reach out and say, yeah, we want to be an affiliate or whatever, and we can monitor that and, you know, gauge how that’s working for people. But give the control to the users. You know they can enable that or they can disable it. It’s totally up to them. So I think the robot is probably the most interesting part of our system because we’re doing a lot of test and learn around it. You know we’ll enable it. See what people like, see what they don’t like. You know adjust it as necessary. But then the topics that you can sort of create content from, including this podcast.Erin: 11:24
Okay, right, right. So there’s a new episode out you know, click here to see more.Mike: 11:29
you know save it here, or favorite it, or heart it, or you know link off to Apple and away we go.Carolyn: 11:34
So that’s or favorite or hearted or you know, link off to Apple and away we go. So that’s awesome, yeah, okay, can you also tell us your most memorable moment on the court or or, and your most rewarding part of creating the app?Mike: 11:47
I think I’m going to go on the on-court story just because you know and I won’t name any names, I mean, I think people that listen to your podcast will know who I’m talking about but with, uh, you know, for four to five years I played usda in carolina and in the triangle and and it’s just a hive of activity, um, but I do remember how I got into it, which I think is maybe an interesting story, and the captain at the time will know what I’m talking about. This was when I first started playing tennis in Durham. I was hitting with two friends who ended up being teammates of mine, you know very quickly, but I’d met them randomly on, like a tennis meetup or whatever, and as I was leaving the court, um, I guess what you would call a super captain sort of tracked me down, introduced himself, and then he had this huge speech about being a big fish in a small pond, small fish, big pond and I was like looking at him going.Mike: 12:46
I don’t know what you’re being recruited if you want me to play for your team, I I’ll play, I’ll do whatever you want. And then, of course, he was asking me about rating and I wasn’t that familiar. It had been like 20 years, I think, since I had a USTA rating. So I was just sort of like, well, whatever you want me to do, I’m a decent player. So yeah, that was my introduction to sort of USTA league tennis and I probably told that story many times. But it’s very funny because I think I overheard him about a year later giving the same speech to someone else on another tour and I’m like, ah, he’s doing that speech again. That is a really good guy though he’s. He’s very, it was very well known, and in Carolina, I think he moved out to California, but, um, that’s funny yeah.Erin: 13:33
See, Carolyn, recruiting is happening everywhere People are hiding in the bushes waiting to get someone, as they walk off court, to tell them either. I’m actually bummed. Nobody has ever approached me to have that conversation with me.Carolyn: 13:46
What’s happening? I’m not being recruited, me neither.Carolyn: 13:50
Did they recruit you and then say you need to self-rate as a certain level?Mike: 13:54
Yes, yes, that’s exactly what happened. And then it was funny because I started playing up a little bit and he was quite concerned Like what are?Erin: 14:05
you doing yeah, you don’t want to get yourself bumped.Mike: 14:06
I’m like well, I met some new people and I’m just playing, and then I ended up getting DQ’d at States.Carolyn: 14:12
See yeah, at the state tournament. Did you get it?Mike: 14:16
or after, was it after it was after I played my matches and our team actually won and they were going to sectionals and I couldn’t go with them, which is sort of a bummer, boo hoo.Carolyn: 14:26
Yeah, you cheater. I’m just kidding Sam Bagger, not cheater.Mike: 14:31
Sam Bagger.Carolyn: 14:31
Well, I mean Sam.Mike: 14:32
Bagger, not cheater, Sam Bagger. Well, I mean, I got bumped to 4.5 from 4.0. At the end of the day it wasn’t a huge jump or anything like that, but the bummer is that some the bummer. Does that sound bad?Carolyn: 14:46
Sorry, that’s a job. It would be huge for us. Oh, stop.Erin: 14:49
I’m 4.0s and that would still be a huge jump for us. Yeah, well, when you’re a self-rated player, I mean it’s, it’s inevitable, right? I mean you are gonna get, if you especially play like 40, 50 matches. Yeah, is that what you were?Mike: 15:03
you were a self-rate and then you got bumped, yeah, self-rate, and I played a little four oh and a little four five okay, and when you?Erin: 15:08
play singles too I mean, yeah, I know it’s not diluted I’m only laughing at your story, mike.Erin: 15:13
Mike, because years ago and Carolyn I’ve talked about this many times on this podcast Neither her nor I have ever wanted to appeal our rating because we’ve just had this like our heels in the whatever you want to call it. You know that we just think that people shouldn’t appeal their rating. They should play it what they’re rated. Although Carolyn tried this year to appeal yeah, but only because I had to play a woman who appealed her rating. He was clearly a 4-0, got bumped to 4-0 one year. Her captain asked her to bump down. You know, asked her to appeal which she did.Erin: 15:45
She played as a 3-5.Erin: 15:46
She won everything that year, including kicking my butt at singles, 6-1, 6-2. And then played the whole season, won with her 4-0 team at States and then everything was disqualified at 3-5 level and it just irritated me that, not because of my single loss but like she may have made other teams not be able to go on because of her wins. And then you know, she was really the only one you know sort of affected in the end when she couldn’t go on to. She could go on to sectionals with her team because she was playing a level up.Erin: 16:18
But we just talk a lot about and laugh a lot about self rates and we go back and forth on our opinions because now Carolyn wants to appeal down.Carolyn: 16:26
Oh yeah, for sure.Mike: 16:28
I get the feeling, you know cause I’m not playing Caroline anymore and I miss it because the leagues down here aren’t the same and we could go and talk about that at some point. But, um, you know, I got the feeling that a lot of the community that is trying to get to States. It’s all about having the weekend away with your friends, right?Erin: 16:48
Right, yeah, so just go do that.Mike: 16:49
Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s totally about that. I mean, I felt that way myself, like I’d get to Asheville for mix. I’d be like, yeah, I don’t even want to play tennis.Erin: 16:57
I know I just want to go watch music and do all this other stuff. Well, here’s the thing.Mike: 17:02
I think that feeds half of the desire, we got to get our weekend in Wilmington.Erin: 17:09
We got to get our, whatever you know.Mike: 17:11
And that’s what I want to do, and I love being there with my friends. And of course you have the added thing here of, of, of um well, here’s my philosophy.Erin: 17:19
Yes, 100% that I agree. And even better than making a state tournament and going to Wilmington or going to Asheville or going to whatever is just doing that with your friends. But the thing is, our egos get in the way and we’re, like I want to be able to say I made it to States and even if I don’t do well or, like you know, whatever it is, it’s like your ego comes into play too, cause we want to be. Listen, we’re very friendly with a lot of our local players in our area, very friendly, like I would say 85% of the people we play against are. You know, we almost could call friends. But damn, do we not want to beat them and get?Carolyn: 17:56
to.Mike: 17:56
States and say our team beat their team. Yeah, I think it’s brilliant as well when you, when you end up playing like I have a match. I played in Asheville, me and my partner at the time, karen. Uh, we played this couple that we ran into twice and you know they beat us pretty badly the first time and then the next time we got our revenge and they were like we’ll see you next year right it became this thing.Erin: 18:18
We’re like I have, we run up I gotta get to states to be, to be that really nice couple that we got to be friends I gotta pay my way to state that’s right, that’s right, spend a lot of money well and the other thing too, and this is actually serious.Erin: 18:34
As adults it’s very hard to get weekends away with your friends, right. But if you make States and you tell your significant other like, hey, I got to go for my team, you know we’re going to be down a four, oh, if Aaron doesn’t show up or whatever, it’s easier to get out of town and have those like vacations. So we try to make it like we just went to States for eight, five combo. I got my butt kicked on a court but it was some of the best tennis you know I’ve played all year.Erin: 19:01
But we had a great weekend away in Wilmington, yeah, but I had to go. Yeah, because I didn’t want to let my team down, even though there were seven, fours and like eight, you know, four or five.Mike: 19:12
Right, we had plenty of people, but of people, but right, nonetheless I mean, I feel like the matches you really remember just where you played well for your level. Yeah, whether you lost or won or lost at the end of the, you know you can walk off court and go. Yeah, I still played really well yeah, happy with how I played versus whatever I mean, I I do have a story about going to um.Mike: 19:31
I had a team that made it to sectionals where we had sort of a loaded roster and I was sort of a singles doubles reserve and it was one of these scenarios where there was a group of us that was going to drive which means like a 15 hour van ride to Mobile and there were like four of us that were going to fly.Mike: 19:49
So, we got to the airport for our flight playing the next day and there’s some weather coming in and all this stuff. So two of the guys are like, well, we’ll just drive over to charlotte and catch the flight to mobile. You know, we got enough time and me and my friend were about to put our luggage into the car to go to charlotte and I’m doing the math in my head, I’m like they don’t even have the flight book, they don’t have a car rented yet it’s rush hour. They, they’re not going to make any flight in Charlotte. They’re going to end up driving through the night to play tennis.Mike: 20:21
And as I’m putting my bag in the car, my friend already is like Mike, you sure you want to put your bag in that car? And I’m like looking at him and he’s looking at me. I’m like, yeah, you know, find another flight later. And we ended up not going at all, oh my gosh, because they had enough players. We knew that we were sort of reserved and I did and they, and that that those other two guys they drove they drove hours and then well, and then arrived right for their match.Mike: 20:47
I mean, you know, I just don’t want to do that that’s crazy.Erin: 20:51
That is crazy. But I will tell you that just goes to show you how much we love this stupid sport, that we would drive all the way. Like it’s crazy. It’s like a ball and a racket and a you know and. But it’s your friends and it’s competitive and it’s so fun and we love it. And yeah, we even have a podcast about it and you have an app about it. So that’s right, that’s amazing, that’s right.Carolyn: 21:13
Mike, I have a question for the app. I haven’t gotten to use it yet but, do you have a way for rain makeups to make it so that people can’t you know? Try to do a rain makeup and then people then sub different people in and nobody’s available. Is there anything in your app? Please make your robot.Mike: 21:33
That’s on our pipeline, we have. We have made a specification for half of it. So at the end of the day, what’s going to end up happening is you’ll see a product where you can link one team to another. Then it exchanges everyone’s contact details on the back end.Mike: 21:48
And then it’ll auto-populate a calendar where you can give availability. So there’s some complexities in how we design this, but we definitely will have a makeup tool, like a version one of the makeup tool, to start to hit on all those real pain points. Cause what happens in the real world? Yeah, it’s exactly that. Who’s playing who? You got to figure out that first. Then you’ve got to get them to continually manage that match and it’s, it’s very painful. So, yes, absolutely, we are making that tool.Erin: 22:15
Get the robot on it.Carolyn: 22:16
Well, if you figure all this stuff out, I may captain. I may be willing to captain. For what? Six to five. I did it one time as a two five and I was like never again.Mike: 22:28
Well, I am biased, but I will say the teams I captain using the app. I mean, you know, the amount of back and forth is reduced by 80%. You know cause.Mike: 22:37
I just basically say everyone, calendars up, give your availability, is it accurate? In two days I’m going to get the lineup and you know that is half the battle. I think just the chatting and the calendar, you know, and all this other stuff is more. It’s almost icing on the cake at the end of the day’s like, yes, that’s helpful, that’s helpful, that’s helpful. But, um, and it’s the same, it’s.Mike: 22:57
It’s not just for league tennis, it’s just for, like, say, you have, uh, like I have, a weekly doubles group on a sunday. We’ve got like 50 guys in this group and we just say, hey, calendar’s up, give your availability, and they get used to it and it’s just a friendly hitting. You know it’s not a match, it’s just showing’s, just a friendly hitting. You know it’s not a match, it’s just showing up and doing friendly hitting. So therefore, everyone’s on the same page. I don’t get a text thread with people I don’t know and you know it brings it brings that organization, you know to the to the table. Yeah, I mean the no name text message like who are you? How did you get my number? Do you have a name?Erin: 23:31
Yeah, and then you get 50 text messages, of whose number ends with one, two, three, four.Carolyn: 23:37
Yeah, exactly, oh, my God Like who cares?Erin: 23:39
Just reply Exactly.Mike: 23:42
That’s a whole different conversation. Yeah, it is, it is yeah.Carolyn: 23:47
My husband was on a team and they were texting the entire day. Yes, and he had almost 100 missed texts yes. And he was like, should I unsubscribe? Like could you say, should I do that? And I was like you can’t do that. But he was like I’m working, I can’t look at all these different texts right now.Mike: 24:11
And text was never built to do this sort of stuff, which is why, you know, we love it when we hear that people are using WhatsApp and group me because they’ve recognized that hey, there’s a better way to do this. I don’t want my phone blowing up, I just want personal text to be over here. And do I still text? Absolutely, you know, we enable that in the app. So in the app you’re able to either share or not share your phone number. And when you do share your phone number in the admin section of a group, you can either chat to them in the app one-on-one anyone in your group or you can immediately text or call them. And so, you know, in my own tennis life, you know, I’m still like an 80, 20, 80% of my comms are now in DMP, 20% are, you know, just flat texting, and even that is fun, you know. I think that’s what we see with a lot of players. Yeah.Erin: 24:55
Well, you solved a lot of problems, which is amazing. Just the beginning, just the beginning, exactly. That’s exciting.Mike: 24:59
I think, yeah, that’s one of the from a product development standpoint, cause, you know, it’s not just me. Obviously, we have a, we have a team in the UK, our engineering team is over there and I have a co-founder who is the guy behind the scenes who’s doing the heavy lifting of the software. So, yeah, that’s absolutely it’s, it’s very. Who is the guy behind the scenes who’s doing the heavy lifting?Mike: 25:15
of the software so yeah, that’s exciting. It’s very exciting and I think this year is going to be a very exciting year for us because we just have a lot of features coming out. You know the base platform is very solid, it’s very scalable and you know it’s all about the small features.Carolyn: 25:29
Now yeah, that’s fantastic. Yeah, we really appreciate Mike coming on the podcast. We’ve included links to double match point in our show notes. Thanks so much for listening and hope to see you on the court soon.