University Expansion!
Blog #6
Part one of our growth strategy for 2026: What’s gone into this process behind the scenes?
Intro
Expanding to ten universities is a big next step for us. This will help demonstrate if there’s interest in our events outside of the universities, which we knew would work (Exeter, Durham, etc).
It’s not without its challenges, there’s a lot of moving parts now, but as we begin to finalise all the plans and details, I am now so excited about the upcoming summer and can’t wait to get started, something two months ago you wouldn’t have found me saying!
Challenges of Scaling
Trying to fit 10 university events in under a month is a bit of a logistical nightmare!
Our go to lunch time buffet during pack down! Baguettes, cold meats, cheese, salad, dijon mayo.
This year, we’re going to have a few events where there’s only one day in between each of them, which poses a whole new challenge that we’ll have to be prepared for.
As a result, the level of preparation beforehand and organisation throughout the period is going to have to be on a whole new level. This has led to us appointing an experienced freelance events manager as well as someone to oversee marketing strategy for the period, both of which we lacked last year.
There’s also the communication challenges which occur with having to liaise with 120 different captains as well as 10 different head reps! Improving the systems we have in place, as well as appointing a head-rep co-ordinator to assist with this, should lead to a smoother process for the upcoming year.
Steps Taken at Each University
team huddle at the Durham Event!
In terms of selecting the universities, we believe we have picked the ten universities where the events have the best chance of succeeding, expanding into sports-dominated universities. This has consequently led to the removal of one university we headed to last year due to many factors.
We’ve appointed head reps at each of the universities who have been working on team outreach as well as on a few social related projects, which we’re looking to announce in the new year, which is exciting!
During this period, we’ve also been in communication with the grounds to finalise the dates. It’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle trying to line up the 10 dates!
Finally, we announced team sign-ups last week. At the time of writing this, we’re at 75 team sign-ups, which is a good start!
The Product
It sounds so silly, but it’s been the most interesting & enjoyable period of work to date. There are so many ways we can build on last year.
Although there are lots we can’t announce yet, due to being in the process of finalising the details, we are working on a couple of pretty big projects which should be game changers!
A big part of working on the product has been mapping out the customer experience and thinking of simple ways we can either eliminate pain points or do the opposite of what’s normal compared to other events.
Our whole mission is to bring groups of friends together through cricket, and adopting this as a lens for how we look at different experiences throughout the day has resulted in us really looking at how we can enhance certain moments in ways that go against the status quo.
It’s also been an interesting time to start developing a bit of a philosophy of how I would like to do things. I take great inspiration from both Jesse Cole and his approach to Baseball as well as much of the great startup advice Paul Graham, which gets relayed brilliantly through Brian Chesky (Founder of Airbnb). A big focus will be on how we can create fans instead of customers, which completely changes how one looks at the overall experience.
Final Thoughts
There will be plenty of challenges this year, but that’s part of the fun. What excites me most is the potential to unlock a whole new level of customer experience; last year, we barely scratched the surface.
2026 is set to be a defining year for us. The growth in the number of events is just one part of this; creating great memories for groups of friends throughout the event is the other, which we hope will lead to ‘fans’ instead of customers.
It’s funny how quickly things can change. Two months ago, I was still carrying the mental weight of last year’s events; now I can’t wait to get going!