There is always a first club. The one that tries the app before anyone else, reports the bugs, and says out loud what is missing. For OSS Academy, that club is Built by Kids, run by Hugo Nunes, a second-degree black belt affiliated with GFTeam.
Built by Kids is two Brazilian jiu-jitsu academies near Paris, in Meudon and Igny, with roughly 300 students in total: 150 adults and 150 kids. Without the right tool, that kind of volume quickly turns into a mountain of spreadsheets, paper attendance sheets and messages lost in group chats.
Two rooms, one team
Running two academies is not the same as running one club twice. Students move between the two rooms, instructors teach on both sites, and the head coach needs a single view of everything without duplicating files.
That is exactly what Hugo was looking for: a tool able to run his two structures as a single network, with no double entry or copying from one room to the other. Today Meudon and Igny live in the same app, with their own schedules but unified management.
The name says it all: an academy built around kids
With 150 kids out of 300 students, the youth program is not a side activity at Built by Kids: it is half the club. And a kids program comes with constraints that very few management apps take seriously.
A six-year-old has no email address, no phone, and is not going to sign up for a class alone. Parents are the ones who follow along, who register their child, who want to know how their progress is going and when the next belt promotion is due.
Two OSS Academy features were born from that need, built from Hugo’s requests:
- Managed accounts for the youngest students, handled by the club, with no email address required
- Child accounts linked to a parent, so families can follow attendance, ranks and club news from their own phone
The club that helped build the app
Hugo did not just adopt OSS Academy first: he played a direct role in its development. He was looking for specific features he could not find anywhere else, so he asked for them.
Among the needs he raised that are now part of the product:
- Schedule management with instructors, so every coach sees their own classes and takes attendance
- Access to his academy’s data, so the club is steered with numbers instead of gut feeling
- Self-managed student accounts, so everyone keeps their own information up to date
A lot of what OSS Academy is today was discussed, tested and fixed with Built by Kids on the mats, not in a meeting room. That also explains Hugo’s remark about how precise the app is for a combat sports club: it was refined by one.
How Built by Kids uses OSS Academy
Day to day, the app covers the whole administrative life of both academies:
- Members: one club roster for Meudon and Igny, always up to date, available from a phone
- Attendance: taken at the start of class by the instructor actually teaching it
- Progression: belts, degrees and attendance history tracked student by student, adults and kids alike
- Family accounts: parents handle registration and follow their children from their own space
- Communication: club announcements reach the right members, room by room
The benefit is not only time saved. It is also fairer coaching: when you know how many classes a student has genuinely attended since their last promotion, the decision to grade them rests on facts rather than impressions.
Thank you, Built by Kids
Without clubs willing to try a young app, a product like OSS Academy simply does not exist. A huge thank-you to Hugo Nunes and the whole Built by Kids team for their trust and for everything they brought to the app.
Do you run one or several BJJ academies? Create your academy on OSS Academy and save your energy for your students.
Hugo Nunes
Head coach, Built by Kids Meudon and Igny
Black belt, 2nd degree, GFTeam
