To the casual observer, the worlds of professional football and tech startups might appear to have little in common. Yet for Eric Dier, who plays for both England’s national team and the Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, there\u2019s a surprising amount of synergy between the two. In his new role as a tech entrepreneur, the grit and willingness to take on difficult situations that he’s picked up playing as a centre back professionally come in handy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Diving into something completely new obviously had a lot of challenges. In some ways, entering the startup world reminded me of being a 15- or 16-year-old footballer again,\u2019 Dier says. \u2018The way I approach things, my work ethic, my attitude, all of those things are the same in everything I do.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dier\u2019s new project is Spotlas<\/a>, a platform that combines the crowdsourced reviews of TripAdvisor or Yelp with the community-building elements of a social media platform. The idea was born through personal experience: when Zoe Connick, an old friend of Dier\u2019s, found out about a restaurant through a friend\u2019s recommendation while still at university<\/a>, Connick loved the place immediately. She wondered what other hidden gems might be lurking in her own backyard \u2013 and why there wasn\u2019t a better way to find out about them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Connick teamed up with Dier and his brother, Patrick, to create an app that would allow users to follow their friends and family members and then see the places they recommended in the cities in which they lived and visited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Our aim is to digitise that word-of-mouth experience,\u2019 Dier says. \u2018This is all about people you know, people you trust, people who you align yourself with in terms of taste. It\u2019s about getting a local\u2019s perspective while travelling, as well as finding great places right in the city where you live.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n