MEET WITH THE TEAM #1. Interview with David Goncalves, our Chief Operating Officer
Welcome to our new (and short) series of “MEET WITH THE TEAM”.
What a better way to find out more about LaSource than to introduce you to one of its co-founders, and now Chief Operating Officer? Let’s deep dive into his interview to know more about his career, the creation of LaSource and his objective to help sports leading organisations to move forward with their digital transformation.
David you co-founded LaSource and you are now the COO, what did you do before in your career ?
Since I was a child, I always wanted to work in the sport industry and I had to make important choices to make this happen. I started my journey in 2014, working for the FIFA World Cup at Rio De Janeiro. I was in charge of supervising volunteers who accompanied the french fans in Brazil. Then I managed to find a 6 months internship at Nike, in which I was assisting the Brand Event Manager.
In 2015, I joined Netco Sports, a company which is developing multi-platform apps for sports and media actors. I learned a lot from this professional experience! Indeed I operated in different positions which allowed me to understand better not only the sport ecosystem but also how to run a product and the difficulties to implement new solutions in an existing and running digital ecosystem. I have worked with talented people, I have learned so many skills and tangible knowledge around digital, project management, entrepreneurship, etc. Netco has been a very good school for me. I have proven myself and I have worked my way up the ladder to become Account Director in 2017. I was managing Netco key accounts (such as PSG, ASO etc.) and the overall strategy regarding RFPs and tenders we were receiving. And as all good things come to an end, my journey at Netco ended in 2018. After spending 3 amazing years in an agency I wanted to work in a startup where I could dedicate all my efforts to a specific solution. I met Samuel who was working at Livelike and it was the beginning of a new adventure!
Where does this idea of creating LaSource come from? What was the reason behind ?
Well the idea of creating a company has always been in the back of my head. When I met Samuel at Livelike we quickly got on well with each other and, one thing leading to another, we realized that we were highly complementary and that our profiles could allow us to create our own business.
Indeed I had that feeling that we were going to create something great with a true value proposition to sports organisations. We didn’t know what exactly it would be at the beginning but we took some time to think about a new product, a new service that we could bring to sports organisations. We did some crash tests with our network and we finally identified a big need from start-ups - In fact it’s hard for them to tackle new markets for different reasons (hiring, sales, integration, brand positioning) so we have decided to create an agency that will bring together the world of startups with the sports organisations. We directly thought we found the right balance: Sam is brillant to put your brand at the top and to find the right opportunities while I love discovering new technologies and diving into it to ensure it can be properly integrated to maximise its value.
At the beginning we provided this service to one company only and we were focused on bringing new clients and delivering as much as we can. But after 9 months, we saw that it was working well and we naturally decided to structure our business. We started structuring the team, we created a new range of services (Advanced, LeStudio, Transform, Education) and we hired our first employee recently (that helped me to answer these questions by the way).
Read: Alexandre joins us as Product Marketing Manager
In other words LaSource is an agency that puts in relation innovative and high potential startups with leading sports organizations. What do you do exactly for your clients ?
Startups and sports organizations are not speaking the same language so our first goal was to reduce the gap between them in order to create long-term relationships. If we purely speak about services we can say that we help start-ups in their growth, advising them with their business, strategic development, product integration and brand positioning. We are currently representing 3 startups, the latest one being Slate.
Read: what is Slate ? Immerse yourself in the world of Social Media and content creation
And to be honest we are not planning to represent dozens of startups. Because of many strategic reasons, we’ve been very clear on that point since the beginning: we want to work with the best, and a limited number of partners. We are more focused on the quality of our startups than having plenty of different solutions in our portfolio. We put skin in the game with the startups we represent: we advise them, we do business development, and for some of them we are also managing the customer success and the up-selling. Our main priority and the heart of our agency is to make our startups become more efficient and grow. But now we are not only focused on start-ups. To drive value and integrate properly start-ups, you need to understand the sports organisations and their ecosystem, their reality. With the support of our new Chief Strategy Officer, we have put together a new service which main goal is to help organizations in their innovation process. This is called “Transform” and we see a lot of potential in it. We are currently working on it and maybe we’ll have something great to tell in a few months…
Read: Jean Baptiste Alliot joins LaSource as Chief Strategy Officer
You are COO of LaSource. What is your main role and what are you doing exactly?
The most important thing when we started this adventure was to deliver our value proposition and use our respective skills. Since the beginning I've been following the integration process of all the technologies we were representing (it is still the case by the way). So what does that mean? Well firstly I have to know perfectly the technology itself so I can run the integration. I am constantly in touch with the technical teams and like a project manager will do, I’m managing the relationship with the client. Main questions I have to ask myself or bring answers to are: how do we progress? What do we need to move forward? What are the next steps? Who has to be involved on the client side? on the startup side? Are there any third parties integrations? and based on that we can deliver and be as efficient as possible.
Apart from that (which takes me a lot of time), I’m ensuring the smooth running of operations, that is to say, find the right tools so that the team is most effective in its daily work, supervise administrative and finance. We have a joke internally, I can change my signature depending on the email that I’m sending (CFO, Chief Happiness Officer…)
LaSource was born just before Covid-19 crisis. Did it affect your business ? Did you have to adapt yourself to the situation ?
For sure the situation was tricky and difficult for everyone but we can’t complain compared to other sectors, especially as we focus largely on digital services and offerings. It affected our revenues a little but above all, we noticed a slowdown in decision-making. I think it was definitely the hardest thing to manage. The situation created plenty of new opportunities with, let’s say, a moderate risk but it was sometimes frustrating because we had difficulties moving forward with sports organisations even though the risk was rather limited.
Regarding our adaptation, I think we are lucky to work in the sport and digital industry. Digital is more the solution than the issue so the question isn’t really how did we adapt but more how did we create a sustainable adaptation. We integrated great solutions and workflows in some organizations and our ultimate goal was to capitalize on it, what we achieved in the past now must create benefits for the next couple of years. Integration is key to deliver value which is at the core of what we do.
A more generic question to end our conversation. You told me you were a true entrepreneur. Do you have some pieces of advice for people that want to create their own business ?
It’s very common but if you have a solution to a problem, do it!
The other important thing that you need to take care of is to work with the right people in terms of skills and values. When you have a great team and a solution to a problem everything is easier.