hattrick.org

Hattrick is an online football (soccer) game where you trade players and coach your team in competition with hundreds of thousands of simultaneous opponents from all over the world.

Hattrick has grown at a phenomenal rate and now boasts 500,000 active users. We spoke with their Managing Director, Johan Gustafson to find out more.

Your name: Johan Gustafson

Position / title: Managing Director

Company name: Hattrick Ltd

Website: www.hattrick.org

Your company / website vision statement / goal:

To run the most exciting fantasy football management community on the Web.

What you sell / services you offer (brief description of your company):

We offer a free football management game and community on the Web, Hattrick.org, which has close to 500 000 active users. The game is free, but users can choose to pay a voluntary fee that brings extra features to his or her account (however, no features that gives them any advantage in the game - they are rather designed to improve the look and feel of the game, and bring more stats and community features).

In addition, we sell merchandise and digital products such as team homepages and SMS notifications.

Have you always wanted to run your own business? What were some of your previous jobs / companies?

I have always been interested in working on my own ideas, rather than on someone else’s. Before starting the company, I did work as a self-employed journalist, but to achieve what we wanted to achieve with Hattrick a larger team was needed. So the drive for me personally has not been to start companies but to realize ideas. My previous jobs were as a journalist, within the technology and business sectors. If I learnt anything there, it was that my business ideas were likely to be as good as the next guy’s.

Have you got any qualifications? Please tell us about yourself academically.

I have a BA in Journalism, which is a very practical degree. You learn to communicate and to deal with people of all sorts. In addition to that I have studied some courses that are of general interest to me, such as architecture and philosophy.

How / when did the idea of your website / company come about?

The website was created as a leisure time project; it was and is a labor of love. While there may have been thoughts about it being able to work as the basis for a business, it took several years to take shape as a business.

If you could give readers of this book one piece of advice what would it be?

Keep costs down. May not be sexy advice, but in reality, to get a business to work you need to turn a profit, and the best way to understand how your idea will turn a profit is to expose it to real costs and revenues. Keeping costs down will let you start using no or little external funds which I think is very healthy, at least if you intend for your business to be around for a long time.

Who are your role models / mentors and why?

I think I have learnt most from my business partners, actually. I do admire the technology vision of Niklas Zennström, founder of Kazaa and more recently Skype. I also admire the long-term thinking of a man such as Ingvar Kamprad, founder of the Swedish furniture giant IKEA.

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