Interview with Nick Robinson, Former Member of The British Ski Team and Co-founder & CEO at Maison Sport

Tech start-up, Maison Sport is an independent ski and snowboard instructor platform and the only platform dedicated to independent instructors.

We created Maison Sport to connect people with the very best independent and passionate ski and snowboard instructors, reducing costs to the customer, and providing a more profitable practice for instructors, affording them more control over their earnings and teaching schedules.

Starting in The Alps, we have grown rapidly to include more than 350 resorts and over 1000 trusted and fully qualified instructors across France, Switzerland, Italy and Austria.

Our marketplace has recently surpassed 20,000 hours of lessons taught and we pride ourselves on the site’s 3,100+ individual instructor reviews left by over 70% of customers, placed on instructor’s profile after their lessons, over 90% of which are rated 5 stars.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
I started the company in 2016 with my brother Olly Robinson, COO and Co-founder, and Aaron Tipping, CFO and Co-founder, who is a life-long friend of ours. We are all former British ski champions and fully qualified ski instructors ourselves.

The vision for Maison Sport was conceived after we acquired a traditional ski school in France, where revenue has since increased around 8x.

Witnessing an antiquated way of booking lessons, while operating the ski school, we spotted an opportunity to solve a problem for customers and ski instructors, by using a technology platform to connect the two parties together directly.
 

 

What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

 
One of the hardest steps to take over the past 5 years has been the initial decision to create Maison Sport.  We talked about the idea for almost nine months.  It felt like a huge decision for us all, but after much discussion and research, the three of us felt like we were ready to commit to the idea and we were confident that together, we could make it work.

In fact, once we started the business, it became easier to make good progress and we’re incredibly proud and excited about the direction the business is going now.

I’d certainly say to anyone thinking about starting their own business, to be prepared to act on one of your ideas and understand that it won’t always be easy to make that commitment, but if you’re truly passionate about it and have done your research, you will learn so much.
 

What can we hope to see from Maison Sport in the future?

 
 We expect our latest round of funding to help the business expand into more than four new areas across the globe over the next six months, including Scotland, Norway, Sweden and Japan.

Additional funding will also allow us to grow, evolve and expand the Maison Sport platform, and continue to allow us to attract the best talent to ensure the user experience for both the customer and instructor remains accessible, fast and seamless.