Co-founder · operator background
Otis Marchand
Brussels
About
Software-first.
Operator-first.
Lobby is the operations layer for European sports clubs. Built by operators, for operators. No marketplace. No data resale.
The problem
Sports software
in Europe is
broken.
Symptom 01
Marketplaces take 15 to 25% of every booking and own the player relationship. The club becomes a venue. The platform becomes the brand.
Symptom 02
Tools were built for the US or for franchise networks of 200+ locations. Not for a 6-court padel club in Brussels with one full-time operator and a Saturday checklist.
Symptom 03
GDPR and EU VAT bolted on as an afterthought. Data lives in regions the operator cannot point to on a map. The DPA, when it exists, is a PDF written for someone else.
The answer
Just the database
and the chrome.
Lobby is opinionated about three things: flat fees, no marketplace, your domain. Everything else stays unopinionated. The software disappears into the background and leaves the club in front. Built for the operator who already knows the members by name.
Flat
€249/mo
Cut
0%
Domain
yours
Principles
Six rules.
Written down.
No mission statement. No values poster. The contract Lobby holds itself to, in plain sentences.
- 01
No booking cut. Ever.
Lobby charges a flat monthly fee. Stripe charges its processing fee. That is the entire cost stack — no percentage of revenue, no per-booking surcharge, no premium-placement upsell. The booking-cut model is the thing Lobby is built against, and that stance does not soften at higher GMV.
- 02
The club owns its members.
Lobby never markets to a club’s members. No cross-club promotion, no players-you-might-also-like, no email blasts under the Lobby brand. Member data belongs to the club. Export is a single button, not a support ticket. The relationship stays one-to-one between the club and the player.
- 03
Built in the EU, hosted in the EU.
The company is incorporated in Brussels. The application runs in Frankfurt on Railway. The database sits in a Neon EU region. Transactional email leaves through Cloudflare Email Service. The DPA is real and signed. GDPR is the default, not a checkbox. No US-only dependencies in the critical path.
- 04
Stripe is the only payments provider.
Lobby does not reinvent payments infrastructure. Stripe Ireland holds the money. Stripe handles SCA, refunds, chargebacks, and EU tax. Lobby talks to Stripe; the club talks to Stripe. There is no middle layer. If Stripe supports a method in the EU, Lobby supports it.
- 05
White-label by default.
Players never see the word Lobby. The booking site lives on the club’s own domain. Emails leave from the club’s own sending address. The receipt carries the club’s VAT number. Lobby is the chrome around the operator’s product, not a brand that sits above it.
- 06
Precise before pretty.
The software earns trust by being precise, not by being pretty. The schedule does not lie about itself. The payout reconciles. The CSV import preserves member history. Visual polish follows correctness. A dashboard that is correct and dense beats a dashboard that is empty and aspirational.
Origin
Why Lobby
exists.
The founder studied padel front-desk workflows in 2024. Saturday mornings, operators reconciled bookings across disconnected tools. One app held the schedule. Another held payments. A chat thread held the truth.
The migration tool that would have replaced all three did not exist. The European tools all took a percentage. The American tools assumed a franchise.
So the founder built it. First as a side project against realistic club schedules. Then as a product for operators evaluating white-label booking software.
Lobby is not a mission. It is a tool the operator should have had three years ago.
2024
First padel workflow. Spreadsheet pain.
The founder studies how front desks reconcile bookings across disconnected tools.
2025 · Q1
Prototype against realistic schedules.
A weekend prototype tests booking, payment, and membership flows against sample club data.
2025 · Q3
Pilot conversations begin.
The product narrows to operator-owned bookings, memberships, leagues, and payments.
2026 · Q1
Lobby v1 ships.
Bookings, classes, memberships, leagues, payments, reports. One database. One source of truth.
2026 · Q2
Incorporated in Brussels.
Incorporated · Brussels (BE) · legal form TBD before launch. Belgian VAT. DPA available on request. Hosting consolidated in Frankfurt.
2026
You are reading this.
The next entry is a contract with your club, or it is not. Either way, the timeline keeps moving.
Team
Placeholder · replace before launch
Small. Operator-
shaped.
A team that has run clubs, not just built software for them. Hiring slowly. Always one keystroke from the schedule.
Operations engineer · migrations lead
Sara Veiga
Lisbon
Engineering
Felix Berg
Berlin
Engineering
Iva Kalin
Zagreb
Design
Mateusz Lis
Warsaw
Support · operator
Niko Hein
Munich
Where Lobby runs
Four addresses.
All in the EU.
Incorporated · Brussels (BE) · legal form TBD before launch
Hosting
Frankfurt · Railway EU
Database
Neon · EU region
Payments
Stripe · Ireland
Cloudflare Email Service
No US-only dependencies in the critical path. DPA on request. Data export is a button.
Ready when you are
Run your club
your way.
On Lobby.
No credit card · No commitment · EU contract on request