Tuesday, November 26, 2024

From Goalie Dad to Founder: Why I Built GoalieLink

By: Richard Cunha
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company

Every hockey parent knows the feeling: that moment when your phone buzzes with yet another urgent message. "Hey, any chance your kid can play goalie tonight? We're desperate!"

The Problem Every Hockey Team Faces

As the father of a youth hockey goalie, my phone became a sort of emergency hotline. Teams would reach out, often just hours before game time, hoping my child could fill in. When we couldn't help, I'd find myself diving into my contact list, firing off messages to every goalie parent I knew, trying to save a game from cancellation.

It's a familiar dance in the hockey community:

  • Teams scrambling to find a backup goalie
  • Parents working their contact lists
  • The stress of potentially cancelled games
  • Goalies missing opportunities they never knew existed

The Breaking Point

After one particularly hectic weekend of playing "goalie matchmaker" through endless text chains, it hit me: this process was stuck in the stone age. Here we were, in 2024, still relying on personal contact lists and group texts to solve a problem that affects every hockey team at some point.

A Better Way to Find Goalies

That's when the idea for GoalieLink was born. The concept was simple: create a platform where:

  • Teams can quickly post their need for a goalie
  • Available goalies can easily see opportunities to play
  • The entire matching process happens automatically
  • No more endless text chains or missed opportunities

Building for the Hockey Community

The best solutions come from real-world problems, and as both a hockey parent and technology enthusiast, I knew we could do better. This platform isn't just about finding goalies – it's about:

  • Ensuring more games can go ahead as planned
  • Giving goalies more opportunities to play
  • Reducing stress for team managers and parents
  • Strengthening our hockey community

Looking Ahead

We're just getting started, and I'm excited to share this solution with the hockey community. As someone who's lived this problem firsthand, I'm committed to making the process of finding backup goalies as simple as possible.

Whether you're a team manager tired of last-minute scrambles or a goalie looking for more ice time, we built this for you. No more endless text chains. No more missed opportunities. Just hockey.

Ready to revolutionize how you find backup goalies? Sign up for the waitlist and be part of the solution.