Second-time founders enter the process of building a startup knowing what the first years actually demand. But they also come with the experience of what worked, what slowed them down, and which compromises they would rather not make again.
For Miroslav Miroslavov, that first company was OfficeRnD. Founded in 2015, the Bulgarian-born company grew into a global coworking management software business with around 3,000 customers across more than 150 countries. Miroslavov eventually stepped away from its day-to-day operations and moved to the board, where he remains chairman.
“I realized I wasn’t ready to retire just yet,” Miroslavov told The Recursive. “I started thinking about what I actually wanted to work on, and I’m a huge sports fan. That’s my other passion.”
That thinking eventually became 1club, an AI-native software platform for sports and fitness businesses. Now, roughly a year after starting the company, Miroslavov and his former OfficeRnD colleague Martin Kirov have raised €2.2 million in seed funding from LAUNCHub Ventures and BrightCap Ventures.
The round, closed in August 2026, will be used to support expansion and marketing across the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Singapore, as well as team growth and further product development.
From coworking to sports
The idea for 1club came partly from Miroslavov’s experience as an active sports consumer. He saw an industry where booking a court or class could still involve outdated interfaces and fragmented systems, while many clubs themselves continued to operate with software that lagged behind what had become standard in other industries.
“Booking classes, courts or different sports activities is still technologically far behind. Many of the systems are outdated and not particularly functional, and the infrastructure for managing clubs is still very analog.”
At the same time, he saw similarities between the problem and what OfficeRnD had spent years solving for flexible workspaces. “I knew from my experience with OfficeRnD how very similar businesses are managed, what modern software should look like, and what the overall experience should be for both businesses and end users,” he said. The initial idea was to build a modern operating platform for sports businesses, followed by a consumer layer where people could discover and book different activities.
Not long afterwards, Miroslavov called Kirov, his former colleague at both OfficeRnD and Telerik, and the two began working on 1club.
The second time around: speed over bootstrapping
One of the first decisions Miroslavov approached differently was financing. Despite having the experience to potentially bootstrap the business for longer, the founders debated whether avoiding external capital was actually the right strategy.
“There are a lot of pros and cons around whether you should raise money, when you should raise it, and how much. We thought a lot about whether we wanted to bootstrap or raise, and if we raised, who we wanted to take money from.”
The conclusion was that capital could buy something particularly important the second time around: speed.
“We decided it was better to move as fast and aggressively as possible and build the team and the product as quickly, and as well as we can.”
And Miroslavov is clear about the type of company they want to build. “This isn’t a lifestyle business that we want to run with three people for 15 years. We want to build something big and meaningful, and we want to do it faster.”
Having already built a company also changed the fundraising dynamic. Miroslavov and Kirov had existing relationships with the investors, which meant there was already a degree of trust. “Still, we didn’t skip the important steps. They challenged us on the market, why us, how we are going to win, and why this can become a large company,” Miroslavov said.
“There was much more trust because we know a little better what we’re doing and we’ve done our homework.”
Global from day one
The founders are also taking a different approach to geographic expansion with 1club, drawing on their experience with OfficeRnD. Rather than focusing first on Bulgaria or the wider region, the company is targeting international markets from an early stage.
“A lot of technology companies in the sports industry are lifestyle businesses, which is completely fine, but very often they remain local players,” Miroslavov said. “For us, goal number one is to go global. Our customers can be anywhere, so we are targeting the whole world.”
1club reports that it already has paying customers in more than 10 countries, while users of its products come from more than 40 countries. Its customer base stretches from Australia and Bulgaria to the US, Canada and other European markets. For now, however, the company is concentrating much of its expansion effort on the English-speaking markets.
One platform for the business, another for the person looking for a game
The 1club model consists of two connected products. 1club.ai is the management platform for sports and fitness businesses, combining memberships, scheduling, payments, marketing, websites and mobile applications. 1club.me, or the 1club Sports Network, is the consumer-facing side, where people can discover and book activities.
For the founders, the two parts of the business are closely linked. Many gyms, studios and sports clubs remain relatively small businesses and, according to Miroslavov, can become highly dependent on a single marketplace or customer-acquisition channel.
“In a perfect world, we want to significantly improve the visibility of our customers, both through their own online presence and through us.”
At the same time, Miroslavov does not want 1club to lock businesses into another closed marketplace. “Our goal is to build a network that is a marketplace, but one that is completely open,” he said. “For us, it’s not a problem if a business is on one, two, three or five different networks and receives bookings from multiple places.”
The consumer side is similarly designed around crossing boundaries between sports.
“We don’t want to create a closed community just for one particular sport. If you do martial arts, maybe you also want to go to yoga, stretching, sprint training or strength training with a particular coach.”
No compromises on the team
Perhaps the clearest answer to what Miroslavov wants to do differently as a second-time founder comes when he talks about hiring.
“One big mistake that we are avoiding so far is compromising.”
The company currently has a team of eight, and Miroslavov says the emphasis is on experienced hires capable of helping it move faster rather than simply building a larger organization.
With the seed round closed, the immediate hiring priority is on the go-to-market side. The company wants more capacity to acquire and onboard customers, increase its marketing reach and, as the customer base expands, potentially add further support roles.
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