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Every month we feature members from the Everything Marketplaces community to help highlight their story, marketplace journey, and share more about what's ahead. In this member feature we highlight Louis Long, who’s the Co-founder & CEO of Conquer. Conquer is a marketplace that makes it easy for people to discover & play pickleball games with others nearby.
I grew up in New Jersey playing competitive soccer and continued at the collegiate level in Madrid. After moving to New York City for a career in finance, I found it challenging to join a soccer team with such an unpredictable work schedule.
Near my office, I found an underutilized rooftop soccer pitch above a bar. I approached the owner, who told me he was struggling to attract players post-pandemic, so I began organizing weekly games. I handled sign-ups, split teams, and ensured everyone had a great experience. The facility and I split the revenue 50/50.
This experience led to the creation of Conquer—a platform designed to help busy professionals stay active, enable businesses to monetize unused spaces, and empower community leaders to earn through sports.
Before building out the software, my co-founder and I hosted our own games in NYC and New Jersey. We identified key pain points in organizing, including payment collection, communication, and skill-level pairing. These became core focus areas in the app.
Our first major challenge was finding someone to build the app. We wanted a developer who understood our vision, related to the problem, and was willing to work for equity. It took several months, but we struck gold with our third co-founder.
On the marketplace side, our biggest challenge was, and has been filling games. Most marketplaces match one buyer with one seller, but Conquer needs to bring multiple players to the same game; otherwise, it gets canceled. This is especially difficult when introducing new venues.
Staying involved in sports as an adult is hard. Leagues are rigid, venues are overbooked, finding a game is difficult, and showing up alone can feel intimidating.
Conquer enables community leaders to organize games in underutilized spaces, giving players a social and flexible way to stay active without a weekly commitment.
We rely on our game organizers to solve the cold-start problem. In NYC, we incentivize community leaders with strong networks to host games, allowing them to play for free. We provide equipment, cover venue costs upfront, and streamline sign-ups through our app.
We also encourage venues and existing game organizers to list a few spots from their games on Conquer. This helps them generate extra revenue while giving our players guaranteed access to games.
Our biggest learning has been the power of focus. In the early days of Conquer, we experimented with everything. We launched with 14 different sports, tested suburban and urban markets, and tried selling into colleges, parks and recreation departments, trainers, and event organizers.
Managing such a diverse set of end users quickly became complicated—we were constantly adding features for different users, and our marketing messaging became confusing. While we had small bits of traction in many areas, we were always scrambling to make everyone happy.
It soon became clear that spreading ourselves too thin was holding us back. To sharpen our focus, we dedicated two months to building robust analytics tools to track our key metrics. In hindsight, adopting a dedicated analytics platform like Mixpanel from day one would have accelerated our data-driven decision-making.
Retention was our primary metric. It’s one thing to get someone to attend a game once, but scaling required them to come back. We discovered that retention and willingness to pay were strongest in big cities. Moreover, among all the sports we tested, pickleball delivered the highest retention, customer spend, and best unit economics, so we doubled down on it.
Focusing solely on NYC and exclusively on pickleball enabled us to triple our platform GMV in a span of 5 months. We doubled retention and unlocked powerful network effects.
Now fully committed to NYC pickleball, we’ve fine-tuned our entire user experience and built closer relationships with our users, achieving stronger growth with minimal marketing spend.
As a founder, you need to think big. It attracts early funding and that vision keeps you going through tough times. But you can’t scale a consumer marketplace until your customers are truly obsessed with your product. And that kind of loyalty is earned by meticulously refining every small aspect of the experience.
Conquer is building the largest platform for social play, unlocking underutilized spaces to bring people together through sports, games, and shared experiences. Our first sport, pickleball, is proving out the model in NYC.
Conquer is designed to scale across multiple cities and activities—street sports like soccer and basketball, bar games like ping pong and pool, and immersive experiences like laser tag and escape rooms.
Our credit-based membership will give members access to a variety of activities while helping venues maximize usage. With the U.S. pickleball market alone approaching $1B, our focus is on dominating NYC pickleball before expanding nationwide and introducing new sports.
To reach national scale, we need easily accessible venues, passionate hosts, and exceptional city managers who can build strong communities.
As outdoor pickleball season begins in NYC, we’re expanding our footprint, adding new venues all across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Outdoor courts allow for larger games, better content, and are seen by hundreds of people walking by.
This year, we aim to dominate NYC’s pickleball scene and serve players at every stage—learning, casual play, and competition (tournaments, leagues, and ranked DUPR games). We’re also exploring corporate and youth pickleball opportunities here in NYC. Follow along for more!
Connect with Louis in the Everything Marketplaces community.
