Booster Athletes
Mobile Development Case Study

Startup mobile app helps college athletes monetize their content.

The Challenge

When new “name, image, and likeness” legislation empowered college athletes to monetize their personal brands and content, universities scrambled to facilitate the transfer of alumni cash directly to student-athletes … or be left behind in the competition for top talent.

This presented an opportunity to Booster Athletes founder Jeffrey Clark.

He envisioned a mobile app offering Snapchat-like content creation functionality to athletes and TikTok-like content consumption features to fans who’d pay for exclusive access.

“Jeffrey had a clear vision for his final product,” Founders Workshop Vice President of Operations Mike Vanderslice said. “He needed a product management partner to collect his ideas, ground them in reality, and implement them. He was the ideal client for Founders Workshop.”

The Solution

Jeffrey’s vision required a surprisingly sophisticated and technically robust mobile platform with a wide array of features, including …

Monthly subscription payments.
One-time micropayments (aka, boosts).
Fast mobile video streaming.
Smart content discovery logic.
SMS and email notifications.
Gen Z-friendly social functionality.
And much much more.

But, first, Jeffrey needed design support. As a startup, Booster Athletes didn’t have a formal visual identity or even a market-ready logo. So, in addition to executing the UX/UI design for the app, the Founders Workshop design team developed the company’s brand assets.

“Founders Workshop’s design capabilities were an unexpected surprise,” Jeffrey said. “I thought I was hiring a software development company, but they really owned the design of the user interface and even took on our brand’s visual identity.”

Jeffrey set an aggressive deadline to launch Booster Athletes in time for college football season.

To streamline development, Founders Workshop designed and implemented custom integrations with 10+ off-the-shelf tools for financial transactions, video streaming, notifications, and more.

And, when Booster Athletes’ complex payments system slowed Apple’s already-sluggish app review process, Founders Workshop’s product development manager leveraged his connections with Apple to push through to the finish line.

The Results

Jeffrey and Founders Workshop launched the fully-featured market-ready product in summer of 2022 – just months before college football season.

Within weeks of its launch, Booster Athletes had secured partnerships with the athletic departments of several major universities and dozens of student-athletes, including candidates for college football All-America honors and the Heisman Trophy.

“I knew what I wanted to build and Founders Workshop owned the how,” Jeffrey said. “They proposed innovative solutions to complex technical issues and then implemented them with professionalism. They were a true partner.”