Smoothcomp is undoubtedly the most popular tournament software out there and we got the chance to speak to the founder, Ricard Carneborn, about the business’ origin and plans for the future. From the Professional Grappling Federation to AJP Tour and from Grappling Industries to ADCC Opens, almost every major tournament organizer uses the software. From relatively humble beginnings, Carneborn and his co-founders Martin Varghult and Martin Janson have been able to create something that is incredibly popular. If a competitor has been active for even a year then it’s pretty much a guarantee that they’ve used Smoothcomp a few times. We wanted to find out more about the organization and one of the men behind it.
Hi Ricard, a great way to start things off would be to let our readers know a little more about your background in the sport…
“I started training Jiu-Jitsu when I was 12 in Stockholm, Sweden. So 38 years ago, back then in Sweden the sort of Jiu-Jitsu style that existed was Japanese Jiu-Jitsu that focused on self-defense. Ingemar Skold, my teacher that started the academy that I now run, was a lot into competition and the fighting aspect of Jiu-Jitsu. Long story short, I competed in Sport Ju-Jitsu for about ten years in the Swedish National Team. I competed in the World championships and European championships. I got some good success and had an athlete’s career for approximately 10 years at the highest level before I started to get some injuries.”
Although Carneborn was a high-level black belt in Japanese Jiu-Jitsu, he has since become a BJJ black belt as well:
“I got in contact with BJJ in 1998, that was the first official class that I took. I had done Newaza but in my first experience I had problems with somebody that trained for 6 months, so I just realised ‘wow, I need to get better’. When I stopped competing in Sport Ju-Jitsu, I focused on BJJ. So I’ve been training regularly in BJJ since 2002.”
Obviously Carneborn hasn’t just been a competitor though, so he went on to explain his background as an organizer and how that led directly into the foundations of Smoothcomp:
“I started organizing tournaments in 1999 and it was smaller tournaments for Jiu-Jitsu. Then I started organizing the Nordic Open Championshps, which is a pretty large tournament here in Sweden. 8 mats, 1000-1200 athletes each time, and we’re now in our 21st edition. So I was a pretty experienced tournament-organizer and with my background as an athlete, I had been frustrated looking for my time on the wall and missing my match and stuff like that. I had a lot of frustration actually about the current situation and as an organizer, it’s really hard to put on a good tournament without stressing yourself out.”
So how did you make the transition from that into creating Smoothcomp?
“I have a good friend Martin Janson, who is now our CEO and also a BJJ black belt. He had a similar background, he was also an athlete and runs an academy, and he used to run the Swedish Open. We started talking about doing something for our tournaments, and it was just like that. It was only supposed to be for our tournaments and we had no plans to take this to market for the first few weeks. I live in Stockholm and he lives in Stenungsund (close to Gothenburg) so I went down with some sketches and he had a student (Martin Varghult) who ran a software business, so we started making plans.”
“I was supposed to be there for one day and I ended up staying for three whole days because we realised we had so much we could do, and we ended up deciding to build a commercial product.”
That’s when Ricard Carneborn and Martin Janson knew they had something special, but Martin Varghult was another important piece of the puzzle:
“We started in 2015 and it was just us three, with two developers that we hired from Martin Varghult. We didn’t even have a company, we were just using his company to build something and paid him to do it.”
Carneborn went on to explain his role in the business both in the beginning and as it stands today:
”I used to work with everything like a small business-owner. It was product development, support, hiring people, building the company… I was involved with everything and all three of us were. In the last year my role has changed because the company has changed so much, so now I mainly work with business relations and on-boarding federations like USA Judo. It’s my job to listen to what they need and find solutions to help our team build what they need.”
One of the big things that people have noticed recently is the Smoothcomp TV streaming service, could you explain how that element came about?
“We offered livestreaming since 2018 towards YouTube. It’s not something that we’ve been promoting so much though, it’s just been something we’ve been learning and building. But about a year ago we decided to build a PPV service because we wanted to change the way that people consume combat sports. Watching 8 mats on YouTube is quite a terrible experience, it’s really hard to find something specific or get to exciting moments or matches.”
“We hired people with extensive experience in streaming and then designed Smoothcomp TV with the goal to give the viewer a much better experience that automatically cuts and connects matches to the bracket and the user profiles.”
Most of the attention has come from the work you guys did with the Professional Grappling Federation, is that a relationship you’re continuing moving forward?
“PGF was our first larger promotion that really used it and it was the perfect event to launch with I think, their event looks so good and the matches were so exciting. Each event that uses Smoothcomp TV gets a watch page with search tools and it’s a completely different experience to one 8-hour YouTube stream. We are working with PGF, Brandon (McCaghren) and his team right now actually and we look forward to see the coming season starting soon.”
Although PGF proved the concept could be successful, Ricard Carneborn already has an eye on expanding Smoothcomp TV even further:
“We’re talking to a lot of promotions right now and we have a lot of interest. I’m so excited because we’ve only just got started and what you’ve already seen is just a fraction of what we aim to build with this. We want the user to be setting some parameters and then they can just kick back and watch, similar to a playlist on Spotify or Apple Music. That’s the end goal.“
Would that be a step on the way to creating a full streaming service, almost as a competitor to FloGrappling?
“We want to build something new. Something that’s fun to use, looks good, and works. The goal with Smoothcomp TV as a platform is both to offer PPVs and subscription services, giving the organizers tools to have another revenue stream. It’s hard as an organizer if you’re streaming, it’s quite technical. You need to know about the internet and hardware and you need to have people working it. There’s a lot of things going on that can be overwhelming and expensive, so we are creating a service that is easy to set up and can also give organizer a new revenue stream. They should be able to sell partnerships with companies and sponsors or offer it as a PPV.”
Could you give us some insight into what’s coming up next for Smoothcomp TV, or even Smoothcomp in general?
“Our team is very focused on releasing the Smoothcomp application very soon!”
This was when Ricard Carneborn gave me a little preview of how the Smoothcomp app works, and it’s easy to see why he was so excited about it as the next phase of the business:
“It’s alpha version right now but it’s cool, right? It gives you a whole different experience when used as an app compared to what the website can offer you. I would say the big unique selling point is notifications. The app will be free to download and it’s a way better experience than just using the site, and you get some notifications that help you. Then there’s going to be a premium version with game-changing notifications for you when you’re competing.”
”Similar to how the Uber app on iPhone gives you information on the lock screen, where you can see the progression of the Uber. The Smoothcomp app will have that, where you can have the phone in your pocket and just glance at it to see a timeline of where you are and what steps are left until it’s time for you. Then it will notifiy you things like:
- ‘Hey Ricard, you’ve been moved from Mat 1 to Mat 3’
- ‘Hey Ricard, your match has been moved up 10 minutes’.
It’ll even have things like:
- ‘The athlete you follow just took gold.’
- ‘Your teammate’s match has finished here.’
That’s a really nice touch actually, because you’re looking at it from the point of view of a fan or teammate as well as the competitor.
“And coaches too! The next version will have a lot of tools for coaches. If I’m a coach and I have 10 competitors then I’ll get a summary of all their matches for the day and it’ll be much easier for me to keep track of where they are and when they’re competing.”
Will Smoothcomp TV form part of the app eventually too, or will they be run separately?
“We are working on solving that but it won’t be part of the first version.”
Is there anything you’re looking to change about the core site too?
“We’re actually redesigning a lot of the tools now that we are about to launch with the smartphone app. We’ve been in business for about 8 years now and things happen really fast in software development, so we’re continually trying to make the platform faster and better. We always want to be on the athlete’s side, that’s always been our focus. We want to make it as good for the athletes as possible and there’s definitely more that we an do, like the smartphone application.
What about the other side of the business, the organizers who use Smoothcomp to set up their tournaments?
“We work with NAGA, Grappling Industries, and Fuji to name a few. Now American Grappling Federation is also coming on board in the US. All of these companies are very skilled and they have a lot of experience, so when we on-board them they bring in a lot of knowledge and ideas. We have support for 23 different sports like MMA, Kickboxing, and Kung Fu as well so sometimes it’s hard to adapt and build something too specific but we always try because we can see that something is important to them and it’ll be beneficial to other organizers too. We’ve had great relationships with all of these companies and they’ve all helped us grow. The largest companies we have almost weekly contact with.”
One thing I notice is that Smoothcomp doesn’t currently register what submission BJJ matches were finished with, is that something you’d ever consider adding?
“We’ve actually built that for MMA already. The challenge with BJJ is that sometimes the person behind the scoreboard is like someone’s mother or friend who’s just helping out. They’re just there to start and stop the clock, so it can sometimes be too challenging for them to have really granular control. But it’s definitely on the roadmap to have it as an option so that a scorekeeper can stop the clock and record a submission, then if they know what submission it was they can enter that. If they don’t know then they should be able to skip it too, because we really don’t want to put out wrong information as well.”
”I actually want that myself because data is so valuable in that sense, you want your stats on how people are competing and what submissions are most common.”
It was interesting to see that data was one of the talking points that really piqued Carneborn’s interest. He went on to explain why he thinks it’s so important:
“I remember when a report came out in around 2012 when I was the coach for the national team, and it said that 8 out of 10 matches where an athlete gets to the back they will win. That was amazing because it told me as a coach that I need to make sure my competitors can get to the back so that they are more likely to win by points or submission. Those kinds of stats are so valuable as a coach and data in general, it’s just so useful.”
I think that’s exactly the kind of thing that people would love to find out, is there anything else you’d want to mention before we wrap this up?
“I’d want to thank my whole team, Martin Janson and Martin Varghult obviously. We’ve been working really, really hard on this for many years now and I’m very thankful for them, for their friendship and everything they do. Our team, the developers, they just grind every day to make Smoothcomp better. We actually just moved to a new office space that’s four times bigger to make room for new people.”
”We have around 4,500 organizers and 1.6 million users, and I’m very thankful to all of them. For all their hard work and support over the years.”
If you’re not already familiar with Smoothcomp, click here to check out what Ricard Carneborn and his co-founders have built.
