Allison Seboldt is a self-taught software engineer building Fantasy Congress: a fantasy sports style game for politics. After having a blast playing fantasy football with friends, Allison wondered if the exciting gameplay of fantasy sports could be applied to other interests. Following her fascination with U.S. government, she came up with Fantasy Congress where players draft politicians and acquire points based on their legislative actions.
Since its launch, Fantasy Congress has been enjoyed by thousands of players and is a growing staple in American classrooms. As a bootstrapped solo-founder, Allison has grown Fantasy Congress to profitability entirely on her own.
What is Fantasy Congress all about?
Fantasy Congress is an online game that combines the structure and gameplay of fantasy sports with U.S. government. In Fantasy Congress, players draft politicians serving in the U.S. House and Senate for their team and earn points based on legislative actions they take in Congress. The team that earns the most points by the end of the season wins. My goal with this project is to help people stay informed and engaged with government by adding a bit of gamification to the typically dry process of legislating. Fantasy Congress is a fun way to connect with friends, keep up with current events, and educate oneself about government.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
So I’m a software engineer by trade. I taught myself how to code and entered the industry in 2014. Around the time I was trying to transition my career, some friends invited me to join their fantasy football league. Sports had never really interested me, but I ended up loving fantasy football. During a Thursday night game, a friend started talking about how much he loved the structure of fantasy football and how he wished we could have a similar experience outside of sports. I thought of other things my friend group was interested in and politics came to mind. Then bam, the idea hit me: Fantasy Congress.
I tucked the idea away as a great project for my web development portfolio, and over the next few years, I half-heartedly tried to pursue Fantasy Congress on the side. It didn’t get far. The project was too big for me to manage while starting a brand new career and having a normal social life. But I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. So, after saving up as much as I could, I quit my job in 2018 and took some time off from the corporate grind to build Fantasy Congress.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
As a solo founder, managing my time has been my biggest hurdle in building Fantasy Congress. There’s an infinite amount of things that need to be done, but my time is limited. I constantly felt like I wasn’t doing enough or was doing the wrong thing.
Usually, I framed my goals around what I wanted to get done in a set amount of time. This led to a lot of disappointment and discouragement because many of these goals relied on things outside my control. I’d plan to have a certain feature built in a day only to get to the end of the week still struggling to complete it. Especially with development, you never know what kind of weird bugs or issues you might encounter!
Eventually, I learned to reframe goals around things I have full control over. Mostly, how I spent my time. I would give myself a set amount of hours each day to work on specific tasks. So long as I put my hours in, I knew I was headed in the right direction. This helped me be less distracted and I was able to plan out my time more efficiently.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
Not having a revenue model implemented when I launched my MVP. We’re our own worst critics, and when I looked at Fantasy Congress initially, I thought there was no way anyone would find enough value in it to pay for it. I built the entire thing thinking I would have to offer it for free and come up with an alternative means of revenue. But I never had time. It took so much to get the application up and running. I was grinding away, watching my life savings dwindle for nothing in return. It wasn’t until I had a huge spike in users that crashed the site that I decided to experiment with charging. Had that not happened, I probably would have given up on the project.
This taught me such an important lesson: don’t devalue your work. Your time and labor are valuable and you deserve fair compensation for it. Giving it away for free is not sustainable.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
These first two might be cliche, but they had such a huge impact on me: The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris and The E-myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. These books do a great job relaying the importance of delegation and automation in business and give great tips on how to implement them. As the sole founder and employee behind Fantasy Congress, delegation and automation are crucial for getting stuff done.
Another book that helped me was Running Lean by Ash Maurya. This book explores building businesses using the lean start-up method and has lots of clear, tactical advice on implementing it. The numerous examples in Running Lean were perfect for helping a beginner like me understand the basics.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
I’ve done a lot to cultivate growth through word of mouth and so far this is where I’ve seen the biggest returns. I optimized web pages to look good when shared on social media and worked hard to decrease friction when inviting others to play. Building a relationship with my players has also encouraged growth through these means. It makes them more excited about the project and willing to share it with others.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new startup, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
In the beginning, I think spending time with your target audience is so much more important than spending money on tools or ads. That said, I would spend my $1000 on things that help me acquire revenue ASAP. Likely, this means after validating my idea has interest with a target audience, I would pay for no-code tools like Webflow or Bubble to build my MVP. With the money left over, I would pay someone to help me with content marketing aimed at my target audience.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Just do it! Seriously. Get started on your first business as soon as you can. There’s so much to learn and you can only learn it by doing. Give yourself a time limit for getting started and just commit.
How is running a tech company different than what you thought it would be?
Oh man, I thought I would have so much more time on my hands because I didn’t have to work in the business every day like with a brick-and-mortar operation. I also thought technical skill was the biggest factor that would contribute to my success. The faster I could churn out features, the more customers I would have, right? Wrong. Code plays such a small role in most tech businesses. Customers don’t care about your tech stack or the number of features you offer. They only care about having their needs met. Sometimes that requires lots of code and sometimes it doesn’t.
How can readers get in touch with you?
Feel free to reach out through the Fantasy Congress website at FantasyCongress.com. I’m also on Twitter @allison_seboldt. You can also reach me through my blog at AllisonSeboldt.com.
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