Topias Soininen

Post-pitch story

Topias Soininen pitched Playven as an easy way to book tennis and paddle courts, an online booking and management system for sports clubs. The Finnish-founded, Silicon Valley-based startup grew its software into a full customer-management tool for sports venues. In January 2020, Madrid-based Playtomic, one of the world's leading sports-booking apps, acquired Playven. The deal helped Playtomic pass one million users, and Playven now runs as part of Playtomic. Soininen moved to the investor side, and since 2022 he has been a general partner at Failup Ventures, backing other early-stage founders. It's a clean, well-timed exit: Playven sold to a bigger player just before the padel boom made court-booking apps a hot category.