A personal exploration that became a validated, funded opportunity in the sports ecosystem.
Fantagoat started from an idea I brought to the table. I was working as a freelance designer for Zonafanta, a fantasy football community of 180k followers, when their podcast interviewed a company building AI for football, with clients among Serie A clubs. That sparked a question I put to the founders: why not build a product that uses real player data to give fantasy managers AI-driven advice? The idea took off, and because it started with me, the founders asked me to shape it.
I led the research and the concept, then carried it into wireframes and visual direction. I ran a workshop with users and stakeholders that surfaced real needs and early feature ideas, from advice tools to how player data could be organized, and set the foundation for the brand and the product vision.
No product, no track record. Just the case to make.
As an independent initiative, Fantagoat had to earn its credibility the hard way: turning qualitative insights into a concept coherent enough to scale and convincing enough to attract investment.
Workshop insights were rich but qualitative; they had to be distilled into one coherent product concept without losing what users actually said.
Storytelling, gamification, and usability each pull the experience in a different direction; the concept had to hold all three together without letting one dominate.
An early-stage concept cannot lock into a single execution; it had to stay adaptable to the directions the market and future partners might demand.
With no product live yet, research and early design were the currency: demonstrating potential was itself the deliverable that turned ideas into concrete results.
The decisions that did most of the work.
Start with a room, not a screen.
To uncover real user motivations, I organized a research workshop with potential users and stakeholders. Collaborative exercises and discussions surfaced the pain points of existing fantasy sports experiences and what drives ongoing engagement, shaping the value proposition and the early product vision.
Validate and design in parallel with the raise.
Research and early design ran alongside the crowdfunding campaign, so the concept could be shown and refined as backing came in, instead of waiting for funds to be locked before starting.
Let the name design the brand.
Fantagoat combines "Fanta," from fantasy football, and "Goat," meaning "Greatest Of All Time." This double meaning inspired the identity and a mascot: a playful goat with football-inspired traits, including a raised eyebrow referencing Carlo Ancelotti's iconic expression. Early explorations conveyed this energetic, ironic tone through bold typography, dynamic shapes, and vibrant contrasts, laying the foundation for the future visual identity.
Research first. Funding as the product took shape.
The workshop and research came first. The equity crowdfunding campaign launched right after and ran while I worked on wireframes and visual design, raising €130k with backing from Zonafanta and Wallabies.
What this project taught me.
The work stayed accountable to one goal: not a finished product, but evidence a validated opportunity existed.
The validated opportunity was the deliverable. Framing the work as research-to-investment kept every activity accountable to that goal.
Putting users and stakeholders in the same room aligned the value proposition with both demand and backing.
Not a shortfall. Early visual explorations were enough to communicate tone and potential, which is what the stage required.
The €130k came in as the concept took shape, not before it. Research and visual direction turned an idea into something the founders and backers could build on.