Interview in 2005 - Beginning of the activities

HOW WAS COACH-HELPER.COM CREATED?

As a Football Coach, while performing my duties to guide the teams, I was faced with some temporal difficulties in the organization and elaboration of the Training Units in a fast, practical and structured way, so that the activities inherent to that would have the desired success. And so, in a very natural way, Coach-Helper.com was born.

HAVE YOU EVER SHARED YOUR IDEA WITH ANYONE?

Of course. Initially with some of my friends and other coaches, who supported me and encouraged me to carry out this huge project. Later, when the project was already clearer, structured and elaborate, I decided to create a blog to inform and demonstrate to all the coaches how Coach-Helper.Com was being built, this in the middle of 2002 and finally in May 2005 the platform officially opened.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF COACH-HELPER.COM?

The main goal is to be a huge work tool for all trainers/coaches and other people, interested in acquiring, renewing or assimilating more knowledge. Here at coach-helper.com, trainers/coaches can have everything they need to prepare their workouts and/or exercises for the sport they choose in a very intuitive, fast and practical way.

WHY THE NAME COACH-HELPER.COM?

Choising a name is not always easy or peaceful. In this case, it was not difficult because the goal is clear: to help coaches. Then, picking up on the main goal of the website and making it noticeable to everyone, the name coach-helper.com came up!

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE TO THE PLATFORM?

Our biggest challenge was really the creation of a structure as complex, detailed and elaborate as coach-helper.com from scratch. In terms of programming and testing, it was very complicated and difficult. Nowadays, we always have great challenges in terms of programming, since everything we do is done from the ground up and nothing is the same. But thanks to a fantastic team of programmers it was and still is possible to make this project real, even if many did not believe it to be possible.

I appreciate the excellent work my colleagues  have done in this project, even those who stubbornly prefer anonymity. Without them a project of this size would be impossible.

A big thank you to everyone!

Interview in 2015, over 10 years in the market

What is your balance over 10 years of the Coach-Helper.Com in the market?

The assessment is one of duty fullfield, achieved goals and even surpassed some. It is very, but really very positive. Maybe you can count by your fingers the number of people who believed 15 years ago, we’d be here today. I spent a few years idealizing and structuring this whole project, before I joined the programming team in 2002 and at that time very few believed that it would be possible to build this complete and detailed software, nor was there anything of this kind for comparison... now there are other softwares, but in no way similar to this.

WHAT WAS THE GREATEST CHALLENGE DURING THESE 10 YEARS?

In addition to the very high financial costs to implement this software and the more than 50 applications in it, as well as our entire structure, I think the biggest challenge that we had was the construction of our Exercise Editor, either the Static or the Dynamic one, where you can create exercises with video animations in high definition. As for us there are no impossibles, we will do better and more with this already fantastic Exercise Editor.

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE THE SOFTWARE, WITH THE QUALITY IT POSSESSES, AT SUCH A LOW PRICE FOR THE USER?

As a coach, when I looked for a software that could help me, I always had two problems: one was they were expensive and the other was they were limited. So it was always my personal intention and, from the beginning, I assumed that coach-helper.com, (in addition to becoming a reference with regards to the quantity and quality of applications available), the price would be as minimum as possible.

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS?

The most difficult was done and achieved with the implementation and solidification of the project. Now comes the best part: the evolution of the whole project to a level that does not yet exist in the market. In 10 years time, the software that exists now will be so obsolete compared to what it will be in 2025, that we will be on hole other level. Currently, the software version is 2.7 and is being more and more improved. At the same time, our programming team is already working on the new version (3.0) and version 4.0 is already fully structured on paper to move forward right after the programming of version 3.0 is available. I can also say that version 5.0 is already being conceived... Many new ideas will emerge, has we are constantly evolving.

We have a long way to go and we are going to go all the way!