Danish Soccer App InchByInch Targets UK Market

Atletico Madrid’s Daniel Wass teaches you how to control the ball with the chest. Copenhagen’s Victor Claesson explains how the right nutrition is key to any soccer player’s career. And that’s one of the essential goals of Wass, an early investor, and InchByInch: the Danish app wants to be a learning platform for young soccer players, for those with professional aspirations as well as for those with more mundane ambitions. It’s, on the one hand, about mentoring and, on the other hand, about improving.

“We want to democratize talent development so that everyone has access to learn from the best; no matter your gender, date of birth, location, talent or color of skin,” explains co-founder Rasmus Bruun. “And we believe that soccer should be fun.”

“A right back from even the smallest team can have a positive impact on a young person if the kid can relate to the player – it being the position, looks, same challenges as a youngster, injuries or something else.”

That’s the concept InchByInch, founded in 2020, is taking international now. Following the acquisition of Swedish competitor Just Football, the Danish app is targeting new markets, with England, home to the Premier League, the key to future plans. Just Football’s CEO Kasper Skov and CTO Joachim Olsson will become co-owners of the Danish startup. The two apps have been downloaded 450,000 times, but with the technology that Just Football brings, a degree of gamification should entice new users.

“We have developed our own technology that can measure how hard you kick the ball by using your phone or where we can mark the top and bottom corners of a goal and with augmented reality we can give the user points for how accurately the target is hit,” explains Bruun. “In the future, we will also be able to look at how the ball is being hit, so there are so many possibilities of users being able to get data on how they kick the ball which is today not easily available. This again powers our mission to give all kids access to how to learn like professionals.”

The partnership between InchByInch and Just Football then was a match. Over a chat and a coffee, a synergy grew between Bruun and Skov. “Instead of chasing the same players, investors and clubs we now have a much stronger product,” says Bruun.

In 2018, Just Football was valued at $5.7 million. InchByInch has raised more than $1 million, completing their pre-seed funding. With more funds to be raised by the end of 2022, InchByInch is aiming big, setting a target of 30 million downloads by the summer of 2024. It’s a steep goal, but with the aid of Brentford’s Mathias Jensen, Crystal Palace’s Joachim Anderson and other Premier League stars InchByInch might well develop the next generation of soccer players.